Interface Upgrades in Go
The zero-copy IO in Go is so elegant.I think you can really judge a language accurately by checking out its standard library. This is one of my favorite things about Go.By comparison,* The C++ STL. Fast and useful, but the implementation is nearly unreadable due to template soup. Here's one of the simpler parts! https://www.sgi.com/tech/stl/stl_vector.h* PHP. So bad it's basically a strawman. I'll include it because it's hilarious:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2012/08/31/what-are-the-mo...* Java. A bit better. Compare the readability of OpenJDK's ArrayList.java to the STL vector.h, which does essentially the same thing: http://hg.openjdk.java.net/jdk7/jdk7/jdk/file/00cd9dc3c2b5/s...But of course the Java standard library is immense and has a lot of cruft in it. To write clean Java you really need to avoid much of the standard library (read Effective Java by Josh Bloch) and add a few important missing parts (use Guava).Golang is really unique in that regard. You can learn Go by reading the standard library. It is beautiful, linear code. The library is pretty complete--eg you can write a one-line HTTP file server out of the box--but nothing feels extraneous. Lastly, I think it gets close to Knuth's ideal of Literate Programming. Paragraph-length comments thoughout the standard library explain what's happening, how, and why.For example, the post talks about how io.Copy is awesome. For a concise English explanation, why not go directly to the source!https://golang.org/src/pkg/io/io.go#L329