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> Frankly, Google should fork C++ and create a new language without the warts and a new standard library. That's how we got golang.

qalmakka 5y ago
Golang isn't really a C++ replacement, the performance metrics just aren't comparable. It's more of a Python replacement, for those applications where it would be just too slow, forcing you to write C or C++ because that's still the #1 way to accelerate your Python. Sure there are compilers such as Cython or Nuitka, but they just do not suffice when you _really_ need to speed up your code.
- zarzavat 5y ago
  In C++‘s heyday there were things such as OKWS[0] web application server. Yes externally C++ was no so popular in such situations, but at Google they had/have many such C++ services and that was the motivation behind Go - a safe language to build mostly-IO-bound-but-a-little-bit-CPU-bound services. Another example of this shift would be that Bitcoin’s reference impl (2009) is written in C++, whereas Ethereum’s reference impl (2015) is written in Go. [0] https://okws.org/ https://okws.org/
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    They still mostly do, that is where Abseil is used. Go has more mindshare outside Google than on Google's critical infrastructure.
- ok123456 5y ago
  The golang genesis story is that pike, thompson and company were so dissatisfied after a ISO C++ meeting that they just decided to make a C++ replacement that checked all the boxes they wanted. They got somethings wrong. They got somethings right. But, overall it was their NIH reaction to what would become "Modern C++".
lenkite 5y ago
> That's how we got golang. I meant a language by removing all the warts, not removing all the features. :) Seriously, if Go offered manual/arena memory management and real generic programming - stuff like template template parameters, STL algorithms, auto-vectorization, etc - it could effectively replace C++.

qalmakka 5y ago

Golang isn't really a C++ replacement, the performance metrics just aren't comparable. It's more of a Python replacement, for those applications where it would be just too slow, forcing you to write C or C++ because that's still the #1 way to accelerate your Python. Sure there are compilers such as Cython or Nuitka, but they just do not suffice when you _really_ need to speed up your code.

zarzavat 5y ago
In C++‘s heyday there were things such as OKWS[0] web application server. Yes externally C++ was no so popular in such situations, but at Google they had/have many such C++ services and that was the motivation behind Go - a safe language to build mostly-IO-bound-but-a-little-bit-CPU-bound services. Another example of this shift would be that Bitcoin’s reference impl (2009) is written in C++, whereas Ethereum’s reference impl (2015) is written in Go. [0] https://okws.org/ https://okws.org/
- pjmlp 5y ago
  They still mostly do, that is where Abseil is used. Go has more mindshare outside Google than on Google's critical infrastructure.
ok123456 5y ago
The golang genesis story is that pike, thompson and company were so dissatisfied after a ISO C++ meeting that they just decided to make a C++ replacement that checked all the boxes they wanted. They got somethings wrong. They got somethings right. But, overall it was their NIH reaction to what would become "Modern C++".

lenkite 5y ago

> That's how we got golang. I meant a language by removing all the warts, not removing all the features. :) Seriously, if Go offered manual/arena memory management and real generic programming - stuff like template template parameters, STL algorithms, auto-vectorization, etc - it could effectively replace C++.