[Rob Pike] I was asked a few weeks ago, "What was the biggest surprise you encountered rolling out Go?" I knew the answer instantly: Although we expected C++ programmers to see Go as an alternative, instead most Go programmers come from languages like Python and Ruby. Very few come from C++.

We—Ken, Robert and myself—were C++ programmers when we designed a new language to solve the problems that we thought needed to be solved for the kind of software we wrote. It seems almost paradoxical that other C++ programmers don't seem to care.

I'd like to talk today about what prompted us to create Go, and why the result should not have surprised us like this. I promise this will be more about Go than about C++, and that if you don't know C++ you'll be able to follow along.

The answer can be summarized like this: Do you think less is more, or less is less?