I am not saying C does things better than Go.
I am saying it is less expressive.
In the sense that there are a lot of things you simply cannot implement in C, whereas you can implement them -- in an ugly and unsafe fashion, it is true -- in C.
Generics is not the only example. You can easily get exceptions in C with setjmp and longjmp for instance. You can even get garbage collection in C (and not only talking about the conservative Boehm stuff, you can use fat pointers -- yes it's unwieldy and ugly, but it works).
As for all the niceties, yes there are there, but you can implement most of them in C also (and, in fact, people have).
You'll notice I did not even say C was better than Go.
My actual thoughts on the matter is that they're not made for the same use cases -- albeit one of my problem with Go was always figuring its use case. Apparently I'm not the only one confused, because the language creators expected to get C users, they got Python user instead. As you said yourself, it has more niceties, so maybe it is kind of a middleground when more performance or concurrency is needed, but C is deemed to tricky or unsafe. As I have learned to navigate my ways around C's pitfalls (and boy, there are some pitfalls!), I don't think I'll ever be tempted to use Go (at least, if the language doesn't change significantly).
I'm also not some kind of C fanatic, I use Java, Ruby or Python if it gets the job done; and while I don't really use them for actual work, I have a soft spot for some functional languages.
You could compare any language to machine language and you can say that language is less powerful. Go is not even close to the power of C and assembly. I'm not gonna even try to argue.
I am not saying C does things better than Go. I am saying it is less expressive.
In the sense that there are a lot of things you simply cannot implement in C, whereas you can implement them -- in an ugly and unsafe fashion, it is true -- in C.
Generics is not the only example. You can easily get exceptions in C with setjmp and longjmp for instance. You can even get garbage collection in C (and not only talking about the conservative Boehm stuff, you can use fat pointers -- yes it's unwieldy and ugly, but it works).
As for all the niceties, yes there are there, but you can implement most of them in C also (and, in fact, people have).
You'll notice I did not even say C was better than Go.
My actual thoughts on the matter is that they're not made for the same use cases -- albeit one of my problem with Go was always figuring its use case. Apparently I'm not the only one confused, because the language creators expected to get C users, they got Python user instead. As you said yourself, it has more niceties, so maybe it is kind of a middleground when more performance or concurrency is needed, but C is deemed to tricky or unsafe. As I have learned to navigate my ways around C's pitfalls (and boy, there are some pitfalls!), I don't think I'll ever be tempted to use Go (at least, if the language doesn't change significantly).
I'm also not some kind of C fanatic, I use Java, Ruby or Python if it gets the job done; and while I don't really use them for actual work, I have a soft spot for some functional languages.