> That is, for any C++ program that could be re-written in Go, you could also re-write it in Java or C# or Haskell, bar a few problems around startup times and binary sizes.
Nearly any program can be written any language. I can write in functional programming using Ruby, but why on earth would I do that when Haskell is "out of the box" useful for an application where functional programming makes the most sense.
> Ruby and Python and (Java and C#) programmers are.
Dynamic, object orientated based programmers are switching to Go when the use case suits. My understanding is that the syntax and philosophies are much more aligned to people of those backgrounds (Erlang -> Elixir is a great example of this) and gives them access to a lower-level language without having to learn many of the common more "computer sciency" things that are involved with those languages (C++/C).
> Nearly any program can be written any language. I can write in functional programming using Ruby, but why on earth would I do that when Haskell is "out of the box" useful for an application where functional programming makes the most sense.
That's only true in theory. In practice, you can't write a program that has soft realtime constraints for example (e.g. a game engine) in Go or Java, you have to write it in C++ or C or maybe Rust. This is true in general when you need utmost performance: while in general it's easier to write the same functionality in Go or Haskell or Java than in C++, the opposite is true when you need to extract as much performance as possible: it becomes easier to work in C or C++ or Rust than in Go or Haskell or Java (of course, this is a generalization; there are exceptions, though the rule holds pretty well overall).
> My understanding is that the syntax and philosophies are much more aligned to people of those backgrounds (Erlang -> Elixir is a great example of this) and gives them access to a lower-level language without having to learn many of the common more "computer sciency" things that are involved with those languages (C++/C).
Yes, because Go is is much closer to this paradigm than to the the paradigm of (Modern) C++. The only programming languages whose vision is similar to C++'s in my opinion are Rust and Common Lisp (even though of course Common Lisp is applicable to different hardware constraints, it being garbage collected and dynamic, it still has a very similar philosophy at its core).
Nearly any program can be written any language. I can write in functional programming using Ruby, but why on earth would I do that when Haskell is "out of the box" useful for an application where functional programming makes the most sense.
> Ruby and Python and (Java and C#) programmers are.
Dynamic, object orientated based programmers are switching to Go when the use case suits. My understanding is that the syntax and philosophies are much more aligned to people of those backgrounds (Erlang -> Elixir is a great example of this) and gives them access to a lower-level language without having to learn many of the common more "computer sciency" things that are involved with those languages (C++/C).