Here's the accompanying text from The Go Programming Language for that line in the graph: > One major stream of influence comes from languages by Niklaus Wirth

Here's the accompanying text from The Go Programming Language for that line in the graph: > One major stream of influence comes from languages by Niklaus Wirth, beginning with Pascal. Modula-2 inspired the package concept, Oberon eliminated the distinction between module interface files and module implementation files. Oberon-2 influenced the syntax for packages, imports, and declarations, and Object Oberon provided the syntax for method declarations. So mostly packages and syntax - not the most exciting stuff, but the package concept contributes to enabling Go's compilation speed, so it shouldn't be disregarded. Ok, you can still argue that many or most of the C/Pascal-family influences were already present in Newsqueak (I'm only familiar with Pascal, C and Go, so I can't judge that), but I think it's understandable that they wanted to have the language the book is about at the focal point of the graph, and not one of its less successful and more obscure ancestors.