It's a shame Google could not have used FreePascal as the basis for Go, instead of thinking that C-like structure had to be forced into the syntax somehow "because it's familiar", even though Go clearly wants to be an extension of Modula, and often must break away from C practices that just don't work.
Given that the language was created by ex-Bell-Labs researchers (Ken Thompson, Robe Pike, Russ Cox and perhaps others), it is not surprising that the language was modeled after C.
Overall the current popularity of C (in systems software) gives an advantage to any language with similar syntax and semantics.
Yeah, they ganged up on the Swiss (U of Zurich) guy in the group, I guess (the guy that worked on the JIT at Sun who also worked on Go).
God I wish K&R layout would just up and die already, at least in terms of having function headers that span multiple screen widths. Personally, I like having "end" keywords, and a bit more freedom in the layout. (mostly, I like to be able to write one formal parameter per line in a function heading, and to use "Whitesmiths" layout vs K&R)
Go feels much more like Pascal semantically than it does like C. I wonder if there is any research to back up the decision to make Go look sorta, kinda, like C, or if it was all ego and/or inertia.
