Go разрабатывали как альтернативу C++: Rob Pike "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++."
И одна из причин скорость сборки: "Back around September 2007, I was doing some minor but central work on an enormous Google C++ program, one you've all interacted with, and my compilations were taking about 45 minutes on our huge distributed compile cluster."
Другая сложность синтаксиса, поэтому похож на С - простой понятный всем синтаксис: "But it's also true that, in the end, we didn't really start from C. We built from scratch, borrowing only minor things like operators and brace brackets and a few common keywords.".
https://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2012/06/less-is-exponentially-more.html