DEV Community

Discussion on: Will Golang replace C/C++?

Collapse
 
peter_brown_cc2f497ac1175 profile image
Peter Brown

Go will die long before C or C++. It is just another fad language. The real benefit of Go will be the features of the language that are adopted and improved upon by C or C++.

Collapse
 
amardeepsaini profile image
amardeepsaini

No it won't fade out. Google is releasing new features with optimization of build. Many big organisations are migrating from Python, java to Golang.

Collapse
 
tracker1 profile image
Michael J. Ryan

While I largely agree with the conclusion, I disagree on the reasoning. There were other OS languages before C and there will be others. Rust for example. That said C has 4 decades of entrenchment. Go fits higher up the stack. It's a good fit for business and proceed work, nowhere precision memory management or very tight system development is needed.

It could be used for some gnu tools or similar, but the overhead of the go runtime would add up to a lot of overhead in space used if they tried to replace all the gnu tools with it.

Collapse
 
peter_brown_cc2f497ac1175 profile image
Peter Brown

Rust will not displace C. Rust is just another vendor controlled language that will not stand the test of time. It's legacy will be how it influences C or C++. There is too much investment in C and too much inertia for it to fail. I agree with you in that Go is too expensive in its runtime but Rust will not last either. Better to learn the latest C standard then invest time with Rust.

Thread Thread
 
tracker1 profile image
Michael J. Ryan

What vendor is controlling Rust, exactly?

Thread Thread
 
peter_brown_cc2f497ac1175 profile image
Peter Brown

Mozilla. Although it is open-source and much coding is done volenteer, they are the muscle and pocketbook behind it.

Thread Thread
 
tracker1 profile image
Michael J. Ryan

Mozilla has let rust be spun off into it's own organization. That has backing from Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Mozilla and others... If those companies are all in agreement on a language, it's in pretty good standing.

Collapse
 
itartpro profile image
Leo

I don't think so. As far as history goes Go was made to power Google server backend logic. As far as practically goes - it is perfect for what it was made for. Microservices, macroservices, containers - Go is perfect for web-backend. I don't see how people are ever going to stop using the internet. You can build a sturdy chat, websocket connection pool, database connection pool, a que for any type of service you need, gRPC connection between containers and services. I just named all the stuff I and many big companies used for their projects. Docker is also built in Go, so is Traefik, and a bunch of other web-related tools.

That being said - Go is NOT meant to replace C/C++ because those guys are meant to handle embedded, OC, and other things where you need absolute control of the hardware. It is obvious Go is not a replacement for C/C++/Rust with the way it handles memory (an automated garbage collector).