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3.5 Years, 500k Lines of Go

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Re: 3.5 Years, 500k Lines of Go

#51

Post by jrs95 »

excepttheweasel wrote: post #44

I think the go language has taken a position along the lines of "re usability and abstraction are overrated". I certainly think there is some truth to that, I am really enjoying working with go on smaller projects and it is this philosophy that has made understanding the code much easier. But I wonder how it really scales on a large code base like this? Some of the best projects I've worked on leverage usability more…

Well, it'd definitely be easier to change than something that had the wrong abstractions.

Re: 3.5 Years, 500k Lines of Go

#52

Post by infogulch »

voidlogic wrote: post #42
kasey_junk wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That lack of magic I have a really hard time understanding what people mean when they say magic. In every language I've ever worked in I spend a fair bit of time saying "how does this work". Go doesn't seem any different in that regard to me.

Example, properties in C# can be method calls, and while they appear to have the complexity of accessing a field they actually could be arbitrarily algorithmically complex. This leads to a programmer down the road, calling it in a tight look, expecting field access overhead and getting somones complex property-method-logic. That is an example of magic. IMHO magic is when the run or space time complexity of a code isn…

I don't think that's quite right. E.g. if you do call a method, it's complexity is unknowable with only local context, so it can't be obvious. I would rewrite that to:

> Magic is when the run or space time complexity of code is misleading by its on-screen representation.

An apparent field access that is actually a method is misleading. Calling a method explicitly just directs you to check that method to know for sure.

Re: 3.5 Years, 500k Lines of Go

#53

Post by adamnemecek »

voidlogic wrote: post #42
kasey_junk wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That lack of magic I have a really hard time understanding what people mean when they say magic. In every language I've ever worked in I spend a fair bit of time saying "how does this work". Go doesn't seem any different in that regard to me.

Example, properties in C# can be method calls, and while they appear to have the complexity of accessing a field they actually could be arbitrarily algorithmically complex. This leads to a programmer down the road, calling it in a tight look, expecting field access overhead and getting somones complex property-method-logic. That is an example of magic. IMHO magic is when the run or space time complexity of a code isn…

So these will be made into functions with uncertain O complexity. How's this situation preferable?

Re: 3.5 Years, 500k Lines of Go

#54

Post by weberc2 »

grabcocque wrote: post #10

This entire piece sounds like the Blub Paradox made real. http://paulgraham.com/avg.html It's written with knocking down a very specific set of straw men in mind, but rather carefully avoids coming anywhere close to addressing the legitimate criticisms of Go as a language. One of the things that's most irritating about Go enthusiasts is the way they try to close ranks on legitimate critique and reframe their language…

This is a case study; no one is proposing that this case applies to all or many other projects. You're the only one extrapolating here.

Re: 3.5 Years, 500k Lines of Go

#55

Post by aaron-lebo »

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #43
grabcocque wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I can't deny that I'm a language snob. I also don't think that's a bad thing. I find Go's magical maps and slices, its null pointers, its verbose error handling and its lack of generics to all be in fairly poor taste. So, yeah, I'm a snob.

Few people would accuse airline pilots, surgeons, construction engineers of snobbery for demanding high standards. When it comes to software, challenging this "everything goes" culture is called "snobbery". People are called "senior engineer" after 2 years of copypasting javascript from stack overflow - and become "proficient" in a language in a week. And yet we wonder why so much software is bloated, unreliable, ins…

There's having standards and there's snobbery. Rejecting a language simply because it doesn't fit your conception of what a language should be is snobbery.

I've chosen Go for projects specifically because it produces better software (within certain contexts). A fast simple binary, a simple language (so co-workers can look and hack on the code), etc.

To act like people are picking Go because they are ignorant or stupid or lazy (which is what the notion of "blub" always is) is unfair and lazy.

Re: 3.5 Years, 500k Lines of Go

#56

Post by oblio »

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #43
grabcocque wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I can't deny that I'm a language snob. I also don't think that's a bad thing. I find Go's magical maps and slices, its null pointers, its verbose error handling and its lack of generics to all be in fairly poor taste. So, yeah, I'm a snob.

Few people would accuse airline pilots, surgeons, construction engineers of snobbery for demanding high standards. When it comes to software, challenging this "everything goes" culture is called "snobbery". People are called "senior engineer" after 2 years of copypasting javascript from stack overflow - and become "proficient" in a language in a week. And yet we wonder why so much software is bloated, unreliable, ins…

> and become "proficient" in a language in a week.

I'd argue that this might not be a stretch in some situations. If you have a lot of software development experience in varied environments (back end, front end, desktop, command line tools, embedded, etc.) and with various dissimilar programming languages (static/dynamic, compiled/interpreted, Algol-inspired/not-Algol inspired, etc.), you should at some point be able to pick up a language at a decent rate.

And even though you won't master its idioms, unlike a total newbie, you'll be aware that you don't know its idioms. A sort of "known unknowns", if you will.

Re: 3.5 Years, 500k Lines of Go

#57

Post by emodendroket »

sinatra wrote: post #39
emodendroket wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they came from any scripting language they probably have never worked with generics -- that doesn't really strike me as an outlandish scenario.l

You're missing his point. Maybe you should consider that people who don't have the same opinion as you (Go doesn't have this feature, so it sucks) don't have the same opinion for valid and rationale reasons, not just ignorance.

Maybe so, but I reject the argument put forward in favor of that position.

Re: 3.5 Years, 500k Lines of Go

#58

Post by emodendroket »

jerf wrote: post #35
emodendroket wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they came from any scripting language they probably have never worked with generics -- that doesn't really strike me as an outlandish scenario.l

Ask a dynamic language enthusiast about that. Dynamic languages don't have "proper generics" but what they do have is all the generic use cases covered... so... which is more important, having a particular feature, or being able to do all the things that the feature can do? A generic enthusiast can argue that the type safety is a fundamental difference. A dynamic language enthusiast is obviously going to take issue w…

Well what's more important that dynamic languages don't give you is knowing what the hell the type is supposed to be able to do when you maintain the code.

Re: 3.5 Years, 500k Lines of Go

#59

Post by lobster_johnson »

grabcocque wrote: post #10

This entire piece sounds like the Blub Paradox made real. http://paulgraham.com/avg.html It's written with knocking down a very specific set of straw men in mind, but rather carefully avoids coming anywhere close to addressing the legitimate criticisms of Go as a language. One of the things that's most irritating about Go enthusiasts is the way they try to close ranks on legitimate critique and reframe their language…

This is riduculous. Where are the strawmen? The article makes very few value judgements about the Go language at all! It's recounting one person's experiences writing Go, but it's not defending any specific features of Go.

He makes one generalization (in the "Overall Simplicity" section) about Go's simplicity being a useful trait, and he's right. You could make a similar observation about Java, but about very few other languages — C, C++, Scala, Ruby and Python all have a lot of pitfalls, hidden side effects etc. that Go doesn't suffer from.

The rest of the article is about how they did testing, how it's one monorepo, how they manage dependencies, etc.

> 'I don't need generics, therefore NOBODY does'

The author said no such thing. He wrote: "Only once or twice did I ever personally feel like I missed having generics". That's all. No generalizations about other people.

Re: 3.5 Years, 500k Lines of Go

#60

Post by aaron-lebo »

threatofrain wrote: post #49
f2f wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grabcocque is not advocating for anything, but attacking the article and go enthusiasts. There is no criticism to Go as a language presented, only criticism of those that claim to be productive in it. In fact in its original form the comment contained only the link to the blub article and nothing else. This isn't enlightened discourse, this is a knee-jerk reaction :)

I just found it problematic that aaron-lebo was specifically and snidely attacking a user's personality, whereas grabcocque was attacking an article author. At this juncture the conversation had shifted from Go to a question of conduct.

I've edited the comment and see that this discussion is not productive, but to defend myself, I see no difference between a simplistic "this is blub" response and "attacking a user's personality".

The discussion had nothing to do with the article which is why I responded the way I did.

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