Starting with Go you could end up not bothering with C/C++.

But why is that? If you're goal is to be a very knowledgeable and proficient programmer, I find not knowing C/C++ at all to be a lot hard to take seriously.

Because some languages are more enjoyable to code than others.

For example, I learnt C before C++ and found coding in C++ was more enjoyable than coding in C.

Since then I've been doing a lot of C# coding and I find that much nicer than coding in C++.

From what I've seen of Go it's seems quite a nice language. So by getting proficient in Go it might actually be too frustrating to then try and start coding in C/C++.

I've written a commercial programmer's editor that consisting of about 200,000 lines of C/C++ code.

http://www.zeusedit.com

Now I don't consider myself an expert in C/C++ but after writing and debugging that many lines of C/C++ code I do consider myself proficient.

But that doesn't change the fact that when it comes to languages, I find that C# is easier to work with than C++.

But that is just my opinion.

wow, how long have you been writing that editor for?

That editor evolved over 15 years (Win16, Win32, Win95, Win NT, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7).

But there was one full re-write in that time.

That's nice but I don't see how this is a serious attack on what I claimed. My claim is simple: promoting ignorance is bad.

You are mistaking 'programmer' with 'computing scientist'.

The goal of a programmer should be to write great programs.

Sometimes that may require discovering new paradigms. Mostly it involves picking up a trusted tool and getting on with it.

Studying programming languages themselves may make you a more knowledgeable programmer but will not necessarily make you a better programmer.

To become a better programmer you simply have to write better programs.

Yes, we are not talking about some random programming language of a textbook like Ada or Algol. Virtually any system you actually interact with in the real world has a very high probability that it was built in C. At one point, it was nearly a lingua franca. I do not argue it is the greatest language or any box you're trying to put me in. I argue that a proficient programmer with the goal of being well versed in programming (not just "computer science" as you dismissively wrote) should be knowledgeable of C and C++ or at least desire to be and not have some strange attitude of promoting it's ignorance ...

I don't really see what the downvotes are about, it seems like anti-intellectualism. My thesis is that if you are wholly ignorant of C and C++, you have a large gap in your knowledge of programming. To wit, you will be unable to understand any systems programming out there; for better or worse that's how it is. This is not to say you are an idiot or something if you don't know C, that is not what is being argued. But this attitude of "don't learn C" is just kind of ignorant to me.

I find the backlash against my view sort of ridiculous to see on "Hacker News." This is really not that controversial.

I think you got down-voted because you were speaking in absolutes, rather than being even-handed. If you had said what you just said then—instead of blurting out a one-liner—you would have been more well-received.

What does programming in C++ or whatever has to to with being a "well versed, proficient programmer"?

Who said you have to learn every junk language under the sun?

It will certainly take a lot less time to learn Go than C, and even moreso compared to C++.

Unless you're building a database or a game, it's probably fast enough.

It's worth noting to joelg236 that you can easily drop C into your Go program using CGO (http://golang.org/cmd/cgo/) for parts that need to be extremely performant. You incur a context switch overhead but it can really boost performance in some use cases.

While I wouldn't use Go to make a game because of lack of good libraries/frameworks, performance is fine for less-demanding games (2d, stuff, minecraft, etc)

If you really learn C++, it will take some time, of course, but afterwards, you'll be able to swallow any new language in a week or two (or three, for Haskell).

I would suggest learning Nimrod (http://nimrod-code.org) instead.

why?? what does nimrod bring to the table... how is it better that c/c++ and go ??

Here's why: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=dom96

That doesn't really explain anything.

There are many things which in my opinion set Nimrod apart. Its syntax is python-like with a mix of Pascal which I prefer over Go's C-like syntax. Nimrod has a very powerful type system with generics, it also has AST macros and templates which Go does not have, it has exceptions which are not discouraged from being used (and gives you a nice stack trace when things go wrong), it also has first class iterators and it compiles to C, C++, Objective C and JavaScript. By compiling to C it makes wrapping C libraries very easy and a tool called c2nim makes this process even easier. Oh, and it has exception tracking and a very cool effects system.

showing off that your language has features that Go doesn't have is kinda missing the point of Go. Half of the reason that people like Go is how few features it has; not how many.

Learn in any order you want. I wouldn't completely forgo C and C++ though.