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Program your next server in Go

talks.golang.org

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Re: Program your next server in Go

#151

Post by davidw »

sushisource wrote: post #147
PeCaN wrote: post #13

What are some cases where I would choose to write a server in Go instead of in Erlang?

You are scared of Erlang because it has uglyish syntax. Only reason I can think of. The "need to do computation" argument is silly. Just call into a C lib from Erlang.

I think you're replying to the wrong person - they just asked a question about when Erlang might be a good fit.

> Just call into a C lib from Erlang.

That's easier said than done. Certainly possible, but it's not quite as easy as just linking and calling.

Re: Program your next server in Go

#152

Post by weberc2 »

inglor wrote: post #62
fpgaminer wrote: post #49

All of the server backends at my company are written in Go. This was a result of me writing a couple servers in Python a few years back, ending up with lots of problems related to hanging connections, timeouts, etc. I tried a couple different server libraries on Python but they all seemed to struggle with even tiny loads. Not sure what was up with that, but ultimately I gave Go a swing, having heard that it was good…

To be fair, Go's GC got A LOT better over the past few versions and it's getting much better still. What I would really like to be able to do though is be able to write unmanaged blocks when I need them and know better than the compiler rather than having to "run my own heap" on top of a buffer like I typically have to do in managed languages that don't have that opt out.

Have you considered pausing the GC for those blocks? Or am I misunderstanding your use case?

Re: Program your next server in Go

#153

Post by yanilkr »

takeda wrote: post #146
yanilkr wrote: post #41

I once tried to convince an enterprise java developer to give golang a try. The guy passionately hated it and the reasons were very very petty. The other younger engineers who did not have prior bias loved golang and they were productive so fast. The person truly had a java supremacy attitude that was very difficult to deal with. Golang is a kind of shift in thinking that you have to first unlearn your existing ways…

IMO switching an enterprise developer from language such as Java to Go is like asking someone who has very developed vocabulary in English to try Toki Pona[1]. Yes, it is simple, and you can learn it fast, you also can also communicate with it, but you will often have to fight with the language to express what you want. That person generally won't be satisfied. Go's shortcomings wouldn't be so bad if in exchange, the…

Your opinion on this is couple of standard deviations away from popular one. Is there a specific example where a program written in golang lacked compared to other statically typed languages?

Re: Program your next server in Go

#154

Post by weberc2 »

pcwalton wrote: post #136
eudoxus wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's true that Go compiles down to an executable and doesn't run on a VM like Java, but it does have it own runtime compiled into it, which manages the GC and goroutine scheduler to name two, so there is definitely some more overhead to Go then just straight C/C++

In addition, the language isn't designed for zero-cost abstractions like C++ is. You see this in the design of things like defer, which requires allocating records on the heap in certain cases, as compared to exceptions in C++ which can be implemented in a zero-cost manner.

I think interfaces are a better example, personally.

Re: Program your next server in Go

#155

Post by kmiroslav »

yanilkr wrote: post #149
Jtsummers wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parent's claim: Of course, but not all tools are equal. In programming languages, languages that have a static type system have an insurmountable advantage of dynamically typed ones. Your response: javascript and python would disagree with you. My question: How so? Since the claim is about the advantages of static type systems, I'll respond on that claim alone. The primary advantage of static type systems, particular…

"insurmountable advantage" - I don't think so. the simplicity that javascript and python provides is an enormous advantage to many kinds of projects.

These languages stopped being simpler when type inference became mainstream in statically typed languages about ten years ago.

Re: Program your next server in Go

#156

Post by infogulch »

weberc2 wrote: post #152
inglor wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, Go's GC got A LOT better over the past few versions and it's getting much better still. What I would really like to be able to do though is be able to write unmanaged blocks when I need them and know better than the compiler rather than having to "run my own heap" on top of a buffer like I typically have to do in managed languages that don't have that opt out.

Have you considered pausing the GC for those blocks? Or am I misunderstanding your use case?

How do you do this? I didn't know there was a way to temporarily disable the GC for specific blocks.

Re: Program your next server in Go

#158

Post by freyr »

freyr wrote: post #20
PeCaN wrote: post #13

What are some cases where I would choose to write a server in Go instead of in Erlang?

When you want to hire developers.

To those replying with anecdotes about how you managed to hire or train an Erlang developer, you missed this part of the presentation: "Go is an answer to problems of scale at Google."

Re: Program your next server in Go

#159

Post by dtamhk »

spriggan3 wrote: post #63
fpgaminer wrote: post #49

All of the server backends at my company are written in Go. This was a result of me writing a couple servers in Python a few years back, ending up with lots of problems related to hanging connections, timeouts, etc. I tried a couple different server libraries on Python but they all seemed to struggle with even tiny loads. Not sure what was up with that, but ultimately I gave Go a swing, having heard that it was good…

> We continue to use Go because of its strengths, but it just really surprises me how little Google seems to care about the language and ecosystem. Go is certainly a language that is used at Google, but AFAIK a lot of "Googlers" don't really like it and don't use it. It certainly not the "official language at Google", given the weight of C++ and Java there. But that's the consequence of being opinionated. Using Go me…

>> given the weight of C++ and Java there.

Python as well.

>> how little Google seems to care about the language and ecosystem

Let's compare with Microsoft. The top four out of five users at StackOverFlow have top tags in C#, I guess Google have a long way to Go.

Re: Program your next server in Go

#160

Post by wyager »

nameless912 wrote: post #73
mseepgood wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is "ninja coding"? Sounds stupid.

I think it refers to the Perl-era idea that good code should be somehow "clever" rather than maintainable. It's how bad programmers who spend hours agonizing over how to reduce their line count (presumably to save disk space?) justify their behavior.

For optimal code maintainability, there is a happy compromise between excessively terse and excessively verbose code. There is a lot of code in the wild that's too spread out.
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