Commit 2b1dbe8a authored by Rob Pike's avatar Rob Pike

addressing gri's comments.

R=gri
DELTA=31  (7 added, 17 deleted, 7 changed)
OCL=35336
CL=35338
parent 3e740791
......@@ -14,13 +14,8 @@ on a compiler with which to explore ideas; it generated C code as its
output. By mid-year the language had become a full-time project and
had settled enough to attempt a production compiler. Meanwhile, Ian
Taylor had read the draft specification and written an independent GCC
front end.
</p>
<p>
In the last few months of 2008, Russ Cox joined the team and Go had
reached the point where it was usable as the main programming language
for the team's own work.
front end. Russ Cox joined in late 2008 and helped move the language
and libraries from prototype to reality.
</p>
<h3 id="creating_a_new_language">
......@@ -65,16 +60,6 @@ about what programmers do and how to make programming, at least the
kind of programming we do, more effective, which means more fun.
</p>
<h3 id="protagonists">
Who are the protagonists?</h3>
<p>
Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike and Ken Thompson laid out the goals and
original specification of the language. Ian Taylor read the draft
specification and decided to write <code>gccgo</code>. Russ
Cox joined later and helped move the language and libraries from
prototype to reality.
</p>
<h3 id="principles">
What are the guiding principles in the design?</h3>
<p>
......@@ -99,6 +84,13 @@ is no type hierarchy: types just <i>are</i>, they don't have to
announce their relationships. These simplifications allow Go to be
expressive yet comprehensible without sacrificing, well, sophistication.
</p>
<p>
Another important principle is to keep the concepts orthogonal.
Methods can be implemented for any type; structures represent data;
interfaces represent abstraction; and so on. Orthogonality makes it
easier to understand what happens when things combine.
</p>
<h2 id="change_from_c">Changes from C</h2>
......@@ -112,8 +104,7 @@ has been designed to be easy to analyze
and can be parsed without a symbol table. This makes it much easier
to build tools such as debuggers, dependency analyzers, automated
documentation extractors, IDE plug-ins, and so on. C and its
descendants are notoriously difficult in this regard but it's not hard
to fix things up.
descendants are notoriously difficult in this regard.
</p>
<h3 id="declarations_backwards">
......@@ -257,11 +248,10 @@ This is answered in the general <a href="go_faq.html#Where_is_assert">FAQ</a>.
<h3 id="inheritance">
Why is there no type inheritance?</h3>
<p>
Object-oriented programming, at least in the languages we've used,
Object-oriented programming, at least in the best-known languages,
involves too much discussion of the relationships between types,
relationships that often could be derived automatically. Go takes a
different approach that we're still learning about but that feels
useful and powerful.
different approach.
</p>
<p>
Rather than requiring the programmer to declare ahead of time that two
......@@ -295,10 +285,10 @@ dependency is one of the most exciting things about Go.
<h3 id="methods_on_basics">
Why is <code>len</code> a function and not a method?</h3>
<p>
To be blunt, Go isn't that kind of language. We debated this issue but decided
We debated this issue but decided
implementing <code>len</code> and friends as functions was fine in practice and
didn't complicate questions about the interface (in the Go type sense)
of basic types. The issue didn't seem important enough to resolve that way.
of basic types.
</p>
<h3 id="overloading">
......
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