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Six years of Go

blog.golang.org

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Re: Six years of Go

#121

Post by zaphar »

laumars wrote: post #70
chrshawkes wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm assuming you trolls down vote because you know it's true. I've tried to use Go, I think it's syntax and unique style sucks compared to C#, Java, Python or even JavaScript.

Go's syntax is pretty much C-like though. Try comparing Go to Lisp, Pascal, Python, Visual Basic, COBOL, FORTH, etc etc. But at the end of the day, syntax is really just a superficial element of a language. Particularly when you're comparing Go with very syntactically similar languages such as Java, JS and C#.

Actually one of the guiding principles of Go's design is that syntax is anything but superficial. It affects nearly all aspects of your design. Everything from the parser to the compiler to the stdlib. Syntax is the UI/UX of your language. Dismissing syntax as superficial is a mistake.

Re: Six years of Go

#122

Post by scotty79 »

eterm wrote: post #92
aws_ls wrote: post #64

It was early 2013, when we adopted Go as a default language for all our server side (micro or not) services. Before that we had been using Java for some years. The reason for the move were few: 1) Ambivalence on Java roadmap, in my understanding (gradual build up, since after the Oracle's Sun acquisition). Even the earlier clean java docs, suffered from Oracle branding efforts. Downloading older versions were confusi…

You based a business decision to switch language on "boredom"? What size team are you working with, that you were able to switch from Java to Go?

> You based a business decision to switch language on "boredom"?

Not just boredom but Java induced boredom. In case of Java boredom is symptom not the essence.

Re: Six years of Go

#123

Post by tenken »

no1youknowz wrote: post #84

I've been working on a huge monolithic project (for 1 person) for the better part of 2 years now. It is in PHP, but the backend segments ported over to various other languages like python, javascript(nodejs), and now to Go. Having now developed 30 micro-services for Go, which all utilise channels and thus run much faster than any other language I used is just amazing. Not only has my productivity increased majorly, b…

> Having now developed 30 micro-services for Go, which all utilise channels and thus run much faster than any other language I used is just amazing.

Any public code examples ?

Re: Six years of Go

#124

Post by coldtea »

woah wrote: post #36
kasey_junk wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The prevailing feeling of Go is "getting things done". This is a common refrain amongst go proponents and I find it quite distasteful. It either implies those of us who prefer other languages aren't "getting things done" or those who feel productive in Go aren't smart/hard-working/educated/etc enough to "get things done" in other languages. I don't think either is true. I think a more accurate way to look at Go is…

It's true though. Go has a small number of language features, and they are only the simplest ones. It can be learned in a day. Other languages like JS, Ruby, and Python have a big fixation on figuring out the prettiest syntax for stuff (JS promises and chaining etc, "Pythonicness", and Ruby's incessant cuteness). In Go, you can't really make things pretty, so you just bang out code.

>Other languages like JS, Ruby, and Python have a big fixation on figuring out the prettiest syntax for stuff (JS promises and chaining etc, "Pythonicness", and Ruby's incessant cuteness). In Go, you can't really make things pretty, so you just bang out code.

So, just like VB then?

Re: Six years of Go

#125

Post by dilap »

jinst8gmi wrote: post #59

I find it curious that virtually any negative or critical comments about Go get downvoted.

I've been having this vision for a while of making a HN-style site where you have to explicitly tag your comment as 'in agreement' or 'in critique'. (And also maybe a slightly hidden away, 'off topic, but that reminds me...' section.)

Then you could, for example, browse the ed column of birthday wishes & happy usage stories of Go, say on the left hand side, and then also, scroll through the op-ed right column of dissenters and critiques.

There's just something very disheartening about having a bunch of "anti X" dominating what you were hoping would be a discussion of "X"; downvoting is certainly not the right solution -- it's fine to be anti-X, it just needs a little bit of its own space.

Re: Six years of Go

#126

Post by coldtea »

ohto wrote: post #10
DanWaterworth wrote: post #3

... and still no generics.

It is fairly clear by now that omitting generics is not an oversight, but rather a design choice. If you disagree, it sounds like Go isn't for you. Maybe it's time to just move on and ignore it instead of beating a dead horse. I am always confused by the push to make every language exactly the same by using the same paradigms and features. Some languages try to take a different approach. If you can't figure out how t…

>I am always confused by the push to make every language exactly the same by using the same paradigms and features.

More like: some paradigms and features have been proved useful, and experienced programmers ask for them in a language that lacks them.

And not indiscriminately, but usually only ask for them if that language is of a certain paradigm / family of languages were those things fit well with (e.g. few ask for immutability in Go, or logical programming in Javascript).

>Some languages try to take a different approach.

Yes, the wrong one.

>If you can't figure out how to work within that paradigm, don't use it.

A lack of a feature is not always a "paradigm".

Besides, by the same logic, every language is perfect as is all the time, and users and potential adopters should not ask for anything new.

The lack of closures in Java for ages is a strong counter-argument to that. Or the rejoicing by which people adopted "auto" in C++. And tons of other examples, besides...

>Your comment is akin to complaining that Haskell doesn't support an imperative style.

More like his comment is akin to complaining that Java doesn't have Generics (pre 1.5).

Re: Six years of Go

#127

Post by vox_mollis »

coldtea wrote: post #102
aws_ls wrote: post #64

It was early 2013, when we adopted Go as a default language for all our server side (micro or not) services. Before that we had been using Java for some years. The reason for the move were few: 1) Ambivalence on Java roadmap, in my understanding (gradual build up, since after the Oracle's Sun acquisition). Even the earlier clean java docs, suffered from Oracle branding efforts. Downloading older versions were confusi…

> It was early 2013, when we adopted Go as a default language for all our server side (micro or not) services. (...) The reason for the move were few: 1) Ambivalence on Java roadmap So, because there was some "ambivalence for the Java roadmap", a language with multiple implementations, a huge community (including open source), and so entrenched in the industry that will be there in 2100 too, you switched to a 3-4 yea…

and whose majority of development depends on a handful of people Google pays their salaries

As opposed to the brilliant stewardship of Larry Ellison?

Re: Six years of Go

#128

Post by acomjean »

I've started working in Bioinformatics. The languages in use and libraries seem to by Perl/Python and some java. Except for the stuff that needs to be fast, then its C. Although I notice some movement to use Rust instead of C (having installed some C based tools having package management would be glorious).

It would seem the concurency model of go would be a great fit for a lot of those existing python/perl tools. My searchingg for projects show it hasn't really taken off in this domain. I might start rolling my own packages.

How is the package management in Go? Data structures and String manipulation? And is does that concurency scale across nodes (al la MPI)?

Re: Six years of Go

#129

Post by arbe »

aws_ls wrote: post #64

It was early 2013, when we adopted Go as a default language for all our server side (micro or not) services. Before that we had been using Java for some years. The reason for the move were few: 1) Ambivalence on Java roadmap, in my understanding (gradual build up, since after the Oracle's Sun acquisition). Even the earlier clean java docs, suffered from Oracle branding efforts. Downloading older versions were confusi…

honestly I have hard time comparing go to java and finding any valuable reason to switch from one to another.

Go in my opinion was not mean for writing large/distributed web applications. But instead for writing tools (and fits very nicely in that space) and therefore replace C code base.

If I had to write something like docker, go of course would be a natural choice for it. But If I had to write the next big social network, well Java would be the natural choice.

Java has a much larger community, libraries, tools, ide and a whole ecosystem that makes Java and JVM a solid platform for writing application at scale (large team, large code base).

Re: Six years of Go

#130

Post by krisdol »

Lambdanaut wrote: post #119
skrebbel wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Best reason ever! Just to push a counterpoint, I never understood those startups with foosball tables, sponsored beer, team workaholidays on tropical islands but god forbid the work itself is any fun. If a technology choice makes people enjoy their work more, learn new things, help them think differently and thus get more creative, then isn't that a big plus? Sure, maybe it does not weigh up to whatever downsides the…

Voice of dissension here. I switched from: * Mysql to MongoDB * PHP to Python * Javascript to Coffeescript All because I was bored of the old tech. and it made the site unmaintainable. I mostly blame the MongoDB and Coffeescript for that. Now to be fair, I learned a ton and I am so glad for that experience, but I lost my website.

Do you really thing it's fair to blame a whole language for making your project unmaintainable, when you admit you were just learning it -- and you had come from PHP?
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