I sincerely can't fathom how Go can be considered a "better C". It's like comparing cars to sheet metal (or some better analogy).
Go is fundamentally incompatible in most contexts C would be your go-to. A moderately heavy runtime with both a scheduler and a GC unable to compile down to a ".so"? C++ and Rust can both do those things readily.
Languages aren't just syntax/semantics, they're ecosystems within ecosystems. They fill niches with particular their capabilities.
A more appropriate comparison is Go to Java. Distict approaches to "half batteries included" robust application and service development.
Not even. Golang lacks the expressiveness and vast standard library in Java (e.g. nothing even close to what java.util.concurrent has), not to mention the very diverse ecosystem, tunable high performance GCs, and management capabilities of the JVM.
I'm not sure they are. golang was force fitted into writing applications it was not meant for. It was made to be a C++ replacement, but it ended up anything but (basically ended up as a Python and NodeJS replacement).
I can see golang being useful in smaller tools that have some networking capability (and with GraalVM+AOT, Java fills in that niche as well). However, with anything slightly more complex (including REST APIs), and it falls way short. So it shouldn't be compared to Java.
Python/NodeJS/Java/Ruby/Go all have a solid presence in the "I need to spin up a REST/SOA/gRPC/glue service wherever" niche. They each have a range of performance, expression, resource optimality, and ecosystem tradeoffs; but they're all still heavyweights in this particular domain. They each have a presence in other "types" of programming but I think it's also fair to compare them within this one.
Go has a few things which make it especially nice in this field out of the box. Goroutines + channels + select help solve the same class of problems that made reactor patterns, work stealing fork-join pools, listenable/completable futures so popular in Java-land. Go's sockets give you epolling for free where we'd use Netty in Java land.
In fact, they each if those language ecosystems struggle with that class of problem in this field: Good kernel thread utilization in the presence of very mixed cpu + network I/O load. What's why they all have a handful of the same approaches: Ruby/Python/NodeJS all do the reverse proxy on top n processes of of libuv/gevent/whatever event loops (reactor pattern). Java and Go are actually similar in that they actually try to use threads well within a single process.
I say this as an obsessive Java fanboy. I'm jealous of a few Go things I can't have: Goroutines (green threads) and flatter struct+array memory allocations. I can't wait for Loom and Valhalla.
You said it yourself. Once Java gets those, there isn't really much reason left to use golang. And with probably better performance as well (I know the techempower benchmarks have their issues, but if you noticed, golang's standard lib is towards the bottom of the list).
Go is fundamentally incompatible in most contexts C would be your go-to. A moderately heavy runtime with both a scheduler and a GC unable to compile down to a ".so"? C++ and Rust can both do those things readily.
Languages aren't just syntax/semantics, they're ecosystems within ecosystems. They fill niches with particular their capabilities.
A more appropriate comparison is Go to Java. Distict approaches to "half batteries included" robust application and service development.