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The State of Go

talks.golang.org

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Re: The State of Go

#111

Post by sametmax »

joaodlf wrote: post #14

I don't share some of the opinions I see in the comments here. I've recently started programming in Go and I am having a blast. Plus, I am making my systems faster and simpler with Go. I love concurrency in Go. I love the concept of Goroutines, the simple and intuitive use of Select. Channels still present a few mysteries here and there... But I'll get it at some point. But the n#1 thing for me in Go is: It's written…

I don't know. I feel like if I need something productive, I would go very high level like Python. In the VERY rare case Python is too slow, I would go really low level like rust.

I don't see the interest for something that not really low level, but not realy high level either like Go. If concurrency is the main issue and is the niche I'm targeting, I would go Erlang or Elixir.

I have a hard time finding any use case for Go.

Re: The State of Go

#113

Post by rcpt »

greg7mdp wrote: post #7

My impression is that Go is a language that was cobbled together to simplify the coding of some specific applications, such as simple servers. It lacks any kind of purity, is not the best choice for any specific task, but is just good enough for some (many?) tasks. And poor type safety! Frankly, I can't help being disappointed by how bland this language is, and I have zero interest in using it. Maybe because I like c…

I've always believed that blandness is the reason why the language was created.

Google has a ton of developers working on a giant codebase. If Google were written in something interesting and complex (eg scala or ocaml) then some parts of the codebase would be remarkably complex while others would be simply a ton of library imports and then something procedural. Whether you are in the former or the later would be developer dependent.

Now, say you're a Google exec, you know you're losing a ton of developer hours as people ramp up to different parts of the codebase and that some parts are so complicated that only a few (expensive) engineers could ever work on them. The more you can remove differentiation between engineers and commoditize programming the less expensive specialists you'll have to deal with and (hopefully) things will get cheaper. There's a size at which the investment in creating a new, bland, language will pay off for you - hence golang.

Re: The State of Go

#114

Post by shurcooL »

aczerepinski wrote: post #8
greg7mdp wrote: post #7

My impression is that Go is a language that was cobbled together to simplify the coding of some specific applications, such as simple servers. It lacks any kind of purity, is not the best choice for any specific task, but is just good enough for some (many?) tasks. And poor type safety! Frankly, I can't help being disappointed by how bland this language is, and I have zero interest in using it. Maybe because I like c…

But if you like typing `if err != nil` it's actually the most fun language.

How's that different from typing `for`, `switch`, or any other way of using a language?

Re: The State of Go

#115

Post by notforgot »

Question: who is going to remember all these conversion rules? By the second bullet you lost me.

Simply run the command below:

   go tool fix -diff -force=context state-of-go/tools/gofix.go
How is typing 59 characters simple?

Re: The State of Go

#116

Post by shurcooL »

greg7mdp wrote: post #7

My impression is that Go is a language that was cobbled together to simplify the coding of some specific applications, such as simple servers. It lacks any kind of purity, is not the best choice for any specific task, but is just good enough for some (many?) tasks. And poor type safety! Frankly, I can't help being disappointed by how bland this language is, and I have zero interest in using it. Maybe because I like c…

For me, Go is the most fun language I've ever used after 15+ years of programming. I like how simple and consistent, yet powerful it is.

Re: The State of Go

#117

Post by rpercy »

geoka9 wrote: post #108
rpercy wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using the Gogland beta for the last few weeks and it's been quite stable. For large codebases, it's hard to beat a good IDE's ability to quickly jump between symbols (go to definition, find usages, etc).

Check out godef/guru - they let you do all those things (and more) in a text editor.

Oh, very cool. Will definitely check out guru. Thanks for the tip.

Re: The State of Go

#118

Post by cookiecaper »

chimeracoder wrote: post #74
joaodlf wrote: post #14

I don't share some of the opinions I see in the comments here. I've recently started programming in Go and I am having a blast. Plus, I am making my systems faster and simpler with Go. I love concurrency in Go. I love the concept of Goroutines, the simple and intuitive use of Select. Channels still present a few mysteries here and there... But I'll get it at some point. But the n#1 thing for me in Go is: It's written…

> Maybe it's because I don't have the "depth" of some of the HN users, but Go feels great to me. I've been writing Go full-time as my primary language for nearly five years. Before that, my languages of choice were Lisp[0] and Python, with R as a very distant third choice[1]. I have always been a polyglot and enjoyed experimenting with any new language I could try out - you'd be hard pressed to name a non-esoteric la…

>If some people don't want to use Go, that's fine with me. But I strongly reject the criticisms that Go is meant for "mediocre" programmers, for programmers without experience in functional languages, or somehow an inferior language because it lacks feature X or Y from language Z.

I think such complaints are the predictable backlash that's correlated with the final stage of its hype-cycle. Tech hipsters always need a hot new thing to tout so that they can pretend to know what they're talking about.

Now that we have a new iteration of hyped languages in Swift, TypeScript, and Elixir, Scala, Go, and node.js are on the hipsterdom downtrend (which often also means they're on the mature user uptrend). That prior generation of languages are now at least semi-widely known, so they no longer serve the purposes of the talentless hipsters, who base their self-worth on the esoteric nature of their preferences and need something that most people don't yet know much about to hide their ineptitude.

I think Python is a great example of a community that built a real niche for itself and legitimately earned the respect of mature, senior engineers by repeatedly proving and improving its utility and stability for many years. Giving Go the opportunity to develop this same type of sustainable, consistent, healthily growing ecosystem without a flood of 0.1x programmers and other hipsters is really the best thing for it. I'm optimistic for Go in the long term.

Re: The State of Go

#119

Post by Cyph0n »

shurcooL wrote: post #106
throwaway91111 wrote: post #78

Man I really wish they would stop using whatever crappy presentation software this is; it NEVER works well on mobile.

It's `present`, a very simple tool. Written in Go, open source. Using it is a choice. I agree its ability to work on mobile is limited and that could use a CL (or a few) to improve. https://godoc.org/golang.org/x/tools/cmd/present

A beautiful example of NIH syndrome in the real world.

Re: The State of Go

#120

Post by shurcooL »

notforgot wrote: post #115

Question: who is going to remember all these conversion rules? By the second bullet you lost me. Simply run the command below: go tool fix -diff -force=context state-of-go/tools/gofix.go How is typing 59 characters simple?

`staticcheck` will statically analyze your code and suggest all places where the new conversion rule can be applied.

All the other rules are same as the last 7 years, you know them through experience after using Go for a week. Way simpler than most other languages.

That go fix command can be typed once and update millions of lines of code. Pretty simple.

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