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Its a replacement for Java. C++ is still suited for situations where GC is impossible, Python/Ruby are still suitable for quick scripting. I think Go aims for everything in between.

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I quite agree with that. Java & Go have a close typing system (static but not very elaborate, and java < 5 was lacking generics just like go), share a close philosophy (a simple language with no tricky corner, safer memory management, designed for programming in the large), have built-in concurrency mechanisms, and are even quite close when it comes to raw performance.

The history of many of the languages has been the same in regards to generics. C++ didn't have them, then templates where added. C# 1 didn't have them, but were quickly added (correctly) in 2. D didn't have them, later they were added. It is very common for a new language to avoid generics in the beginning, but it seems most come to agree, it was a mistake.

C# had them already internally in 1999, before the 1.0 release, they just decided to focus on other issues for the first release of .NET.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dsyme/archive/2011/03/15/net-c-gener...

On the functional languages world, parametric polymorphism has usually always been part of the first versions.

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