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There is a vast philosophical gulf between languages like C and Go (less is more) and languages like Rust and C++.

woodruffw 4y ago
Apart from a paucity of syntax, in what sense does Go obey "less is more"? It's well known for having a large and high-quality standard library (it has an X.509 parser! Even Python doesn't have that!). In many ways, the "less is more" property exists on separate axes for C and Go: C's syntax is relatively complex while Go's is relatively simple. C's standard library and runtime are minuscule; Go's are large.
- grey-area 4y ago
  The syntax is simple, but more importantly they have left out a lot of things other languages take for granted: inheritance, exceptions (panic is not oft used) and of course till recently generics. Yes the std library is larger but I’d say that is a good thing and is not the language but the ecosystem.
- Matl 4y ago
  It's all very academic and I don't have a strong opinion on it either way but I would say C has a relatively simple syntax (no classes, no inheritance, few keywords, few symbols in its syntax etc.) but its semantics (i.e. how to use the simple syntax to produce correct software) are fairly complex. In comparison, Go has both; a relatively simple syntax and semantics, (except for a few exceptions). I guess people focus on the syntax part of Go to say it's like C and the semantics being easier is what makes it better/a successor? It's all rather vague and I'm not a proponent of this mantra myself, but that's how I understand it anyway. With regards to the stdlib, that doesn't violate 'less is more' if you argue from a 'things to learn' point of view. A large stdlib doesn't really add to the complexity of the language feature set itself. It just provides utilities you don't have to write/hunt for. In comparison Rust just added support for generic associated types. That's a language level feature, in that sense Rust is more akin to C++ than C. Go added generics, but apart from that it doesn't tend to add 'big' language features. And if you adopt this mindset and close one eye it can just about make sense to liken C and Go.
  - woodruffw 4y ago
    > It's all very academic and I don't have a strong opinion on it either way but I would say C has a relatively simple syntax (no classes, no inheritance, few keywords, few symbols in its syntax etc.) but its semantics (i.e. how to use the simple syntax to produce correct software) are fairly complex. I agree that C's syntax is visually simple, but it's actually pretty complex from a parsing perspective: it's both context sensitive and binding sensitive, meaning that a correct C parser needs to be aware of the current parsing context's "live" bindings (including other functions) in order to resolve ambiguities like this: int foo(int(bar)); (`foo` could either be a function or a local `int` variable.) I can understand that ultimate mindset! Rust is certainly a much more complex language from a syntax and semantics perspective, and (I think) the community wouldn't want to claim the "C successor" label anyways.

Apart from a paucity of syntax, in what sense does Go obey "less is more"? It's well known for having a large and high-quality standard library (it has an X.509 parser! Even Python doesn't have that!). In many ways, the "less is more" property exists on separate axes for C and Go: C's syntax is relatively complex while Go's is relatively simple. C's standard library and runtime are minuscule; Go's are large.

grey-area 4y ago
The syntax is simple, but more importantly they have left out a lot of things other languages take for granted: inheritance, exceptions (panic is not oft used) and of course till recently generics. Yes the std library is larger but I’d say that is a good thing and is not the language but the ecosystem.
Matl 4y ago
It's all very academic and I don't have a strong opinion on it either way but I would say C has a relatively simple syntax (no classes, no inheritance, few keywords, few symbols in its syntax etc.) but its semantics (i.e. how to use the simple syntax to produce correct software) are fairly complex. In comparison, Go has both; a relatively simple syntax and semantics, (except for a few exceptions). I guess people focus on the syntax part of Go to say it's like C and the semantics being easier is what makes it better/a successor? It's all rather vague and I'm not a proponent of this mantra myself, but that's how I understand it anyway. With regards to the stdlib, that doesn't violate 'less is more' if you argue from a 'things to learn' point of view. A large stdlib doesn't really add to the complexity of the language feature set itself. It just provides utilities you don't have to write/hunt for. In comparison Rust just added support for generic associated types. That's a language level feature, in that sense Rust is more akin to C++ than C. Go added generics, but apart from that it doesn't tend to add 'big' language features. And if you adopt this mindset and close one eye it can just about make sense to liken C and Go.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  > It's all very academic and I don't have a strong opinion on it either way but I would say C has a relatively simple syntax (no classes, no inheritance, few keywords, few symbols in its syntax etc.) but its semantics (i.e. how to use the simple syntax to produce correct software) are fairly complex. I agree that C's syntax is visually simple, but it's actually pretty complex from a parsing perspective: it's both context sensitive and binding sensitive, meaning that a correct C parser needs to be aware of the current parsing context's "live" bindings (including other functions) in order to resolve ambiguities like this: int foo(int(bar)); (`foo` could either be a function or a local `int` variable.) I can understand that ultimate mindset! Rust is certainly a much more complex language from a syntax and semantics perspective, and (I think) the community wouldn't want to claim the "C successor" label anyways.