> Ask yourself. Which of these two languages are more likely to be complemented by language nerds/snobs - C++, or Scheme...
I realized that you might have meant "compliment" instead of "complement". The answer depends entirely on what you call a "language nerd". For me, Scheme is a beauty to behold while C++ is an abomination.
But the depressing fact is that C++ is used way more than Scheme, even in areas where Scheme is clearly more suited. This is why I am enthusiastic about go; it can hardly represent the entire "simplicity and orthogonality" school, but it makes very practical use of its simplicity: very regular code, friendly learning curve, intuitive tooling, rich IDE plugins, fast compilation, simple deployment, etc. Eventually some will start to think about the reason for these advantages and appreciate simplicity on practical ground.
Arguably, Go (and C) differs from the other languages of the orthodox "simplicity and orthography" school. Conceptually, go is much more complex than, say, Smalltalk. But most, if not all, constructs in go can be mapped to their machine representations in a simple and efficient way. So rather than adhering strictly to conceptual simplicity, go actually prioritizes "practical simplicity" and apply conceptual simplicity whenever possible. The result is a very well-thought trade-off that I appreciate - the language is simple enough without sacrificing too much performance or making the compiler hard to write - it is much more tricky to write an good compiler for the other conceptually simple languages.
Anyway, I still loath the lack of generics in go. People are always pointing to Russ Cox's generic dilemma (http://research.swtch.com/generic) when topics on generics are brought up. Come on, you have to make trade-offs and there are cases where it is really useful...
I realized that you might have meant "compliment" instead of "complement". The answer depends entirely on what you call a "language nerd". For me, Scheme is a beauty to behold while C++ is an abomination.
But the depressing fact is that C++ is used way more than Scheme, even in areas where Scheme is clearly more suited. This is why I am enthusiastic about go; it can hardly represent the entire "simplicity and orthogonality" school, but it makes very practical use of its simplicity: very regular code, friendly learning curve, intuitive tooling, rich IDE plugins, fast compilation, simple deployment, etc. Eventually some will start to think about the reason for these advantages and appreciate simplicity on practical ground.
Arguably, Go (and C) differs from the other languages of the orthodox "simplicity and orthography" school. Conceptually, go is much more complex than, say, Smalltalk. But most, if not all, constructs in go can be mapped to their machine representations in a simple and efficient way. So rather than adhering strictly to conceptual simplicity, go actually prioritizes "practical simplicity" and apply conceptual simplicity whenever possible. The result is a very well-thought trade-off that I appreciate - the language is simple enough without sacrificing too much performance or making the compiler hard to write - it is much more tricky to write an good compiler for the other conceptually simple languages.
Anyway, I still loath the lack of generics in go. People are always pointing to Russ Cox's generic dilemma (http://research.swtch.com/generic) when topics on generics are brought up. Come on, you have to make trade-offs and there are cases where it is really useful...