He might not know C, but the creators of Go certainly do, so don't let this post...

unimpressive · on March 9, 2012

> But the creators of go certainly do.

The only person who knows C better than the lead designer of go. (Ken Thompson IIRC.) Is in a casket right now.

EDIT: I didn't mean that in a ill-spirited tone. I'm just pointing out that the people working on go are the best alive.

Arelius · on March 9, 2012

I know who Ken Thompson is, and don't so much disagree. But that is a bold and oft-repeated statement, that seems to not be fully supported by the evidence.

unimpressive · on March 9, 2012

I'll concede that the former project lead for Unix might not be the best C programmer.

But then; who is?

If there's evidence to support that there's someone who knows it better than Ken, I personally would like to see it. (More from curiosity than anything else.)

Arelius · on March 9, 2012

I'm certainly not qualified to answer. But there has certinally been some very impressive code written by people who spend a huge amount of their time in game development, kernel development, or any other large system that is written exclusively in C.

Frankly, even if Unix was that project, I'd expect that the "best" C programmer may actually be someone who is in a much visible position.

Then again, Ken may very well be the best C programmer, but Go doesn't much seem like a language designed to address the issues that C is currently being used to address. Frankly, it seems like a much better Java replacement IMO.