I love Go and I consider it to be the spiritual successor to C, in a way (sort of an anti-C++, which the creators have said they used as an explicit example of what not to do).
Given that it was co-created by Ken Thompson (of Unix/C/Plan9 fame), I think the comparison is justified.
I think the general idea is C++ (not C) in the style of Python.
You still have access to memory/pointers/unsafe, it shares a C-style syntax (go ahead, put in the semicolons if you want!), is compiled but offers the gentle, elegant watchfulness of a Python-like scripting language.
In most cases it can be a relatively drop-in replacement for C++ or Python as a binary. It will never be like C in that there's a lot of overhead and lack of memory control for embedded systems, so you probably can't treat it as a C competitor in any way.
I would say it shares some design philosophy with C: simple, "New Jersey style", imperative, pragmatic, non-generic, explicit control flow.
Re:Official Go support
by jimmysawczuk on Tuesday September 23, 2014 @03:26PM
(#8357592)
Another similarity is that both Go and C compile to dependency-free and portable binaries with no VM needed to run them. In my mind, that's the biggest similarity.
And regarding semicolons: you don't use them as much while coding, but the lexer puts them in for you, so they're there on some level.
Many people, myself included, find it a wonderful language suitable for all sorts of service development whether it's data processing systems or web APIs.