Ian Lance Taylor's Response to “Go Is Google's Language” • Hacker News Board

Re: Ian Lance Taylor's Response to “Go Is Google's Language”

#321

Post by vorg » Tue, May 28, 2019, 10:12 AM UTC

kragen wrote: post #309

vorg wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> PHP, Python, Ruby, Tcl, OCaml, Lua Many of those languages came out in the 1990's when the big corporates were busy pushing visual 4GL's to replace programming languages. But programmers prefered to write a Perl ten-liner rather than fire up a visual environment, click on some toolbars to place some widgets on a form, link in the data files using the right-click form, wait while the OS thrashes the hard drive as it…

My memory of that time is pretty different. I worked as a programmer in the 1990s, when I got paid to write things in C, C++, Perl, Khoros (I guess that's a "visual 4GL"?), IDL (the array language), VB, SQL, INFORMIX's horrible forms thing (which was not especially "visual"), sh, csh (not my fault), and occasionally Tcl. It's true that PHP, Ruby, Tcl, OCaml, and Lua came out in the 1990s (Python is from 1990, so argu…

> Microsoft was pushing VB, which sort of resembles what you're saying, but VB wasn't a 4GL

Every marketing department was calling their company's new software development product/language/whatever a "Fourth Generation Language" back then. There's no actual definition for what it really means. Perl, Python, Ruby, and PHP represent a trend that peaked the 1990's, some came before and some after, so there's no need to read "1990's" literally.

My total memory (i.e. work, study, and hobby) of that extended decade (1985-ish to 2005-ish) was VB, VBA (Access, Excel), Java on Windows, Quattro Pro, dBASE 3+, Perl, Cobol on IBM (and ICL), and a myriad other obscure mainframe languages and mini-languages that probably still get used in banks and insurance companies.

> I don't recognize your description as corresponding to any events I remember

My previous description of that time was quite typical for many of us. For example, I remember in 2001 developing a five-line Word macro for an accounting department on a leftover 386 sitting in the corner running Windows 95 that read in a file couriered in daily from some other company's Unix system that stripped out some incompatible data from each line. After I deployed it into production, the user every morning started Word, opened a Word document that contained a button on a form, clicked on the button, selected the day's file from the floppy, then waited (at the water cooler) while the macro ran. They then renamed the output file so the date was in the name, and copied it from the LAN to the mainframe using some proprietary program, so it could be input (with the funny Unix bytes removed) to the overnight processing run. Perhaps you worked in the other company sending that Unix-based file to us every day, and didn't see the ongoing after-effects of your C++ program that produced the file.

> they soon built their own

C#, Go, Swift, etc.

Re: Ian Lance Taylor's Response to “Go Is Google's Language”

#322

Post by droithomme » Tue, May 28, 2019, 11:15 AM UTC

throwawaymath wrote: post #240

droithomme wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. I read further along in the linked post and found this comment by Rob Pike, one of Go's chief developers: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/golang-nuts/6dKNSN0M_kg/dMCQ... > The name Go is not trademarked by Google, at least as a programming language trademark. There are other things Google makes called Go (an interesting signal on its own) and they might be trademarked, but Go the language is not a trademark.…

I'm not certain, but I think that page is wrong. I searched the USPTO database of trademarks for "Golang" and nothing was picked up: http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=toc&state=4809%3Ax... I'm not confident I'm correct only because it seems unlikely Google would have a page listing trademarks it doesn't actually own. That being said, I'm pretty sure there's no other place to search for trademarks. I also don'…

https://trademarks.justia.com/881/00/go-88100955.html

Word Mark GO

Goods and Services IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038.

G & S: Computer programs and downloadable computer programs that implement a computer programming language for use in developing, building and managing other software.

FIRST USE: 20091110.

FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 20091110

Standard Characters Claimed

Mark Drawing Code (4) STANDARD CHARACTER MARK

Serial Number 88100955

Filing Date August 31, 2018

Current Basis 1A

Original Filing Basis 1A

Owner (APPLICANT) Google LLC LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY DELAWARE 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View CALIFORNIA 94043

Type of Mark TRADEMARK

Register PRINCIPAL

Live/Dead Indicator LIVE

Re: Ian Lance Taylor's Response to “Go Is Google's Language”

#323

Post by repolfx » Tue, May 28, 2019, 11:34 AM UTC

tsimionescu wrote: post #228

pizza234 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's also worth highlighting this: no successful language-indeed, no successful free software project of any sort is a democracy [...] Successful languages pay attention to what people want, but to change the language according to what most people want is, I believe, a recipe for chaos and incoherence. I believe that every successful language must have a coherent vision that is shared by a relatively small gr…

Isn't C++ committee-driven, which could be considered a type of democratic process? Or would that not be considered an open-source project? On that note, I also seem to remember that LLVM/Clang are pretty democratic, but I haven't dug deeply and may be completely wrong.

Large parts of Java are handled via the Java Community Process.

Re: Ian Lance Taylor's Response to “Go Is Google's Language”

#324

Post by repolfx » Tue, May 28, 2019, 11:37 AM UTC

Thaxll wrote: post #279

apta wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The last thing we want is another Java ecosystem, Which practically contains almost everything one can think of? Yeah, like that's not a good thing. Where's the golang equivalent of Hadoop, Spark, Vertx, Netty, Akka, etc.? Not to mention the Java standard library with it's new time package, and java.util.concurrent, and many more. > Better to not have generics than to have generics that are bodged into the language…

The Java time package has been a disaster for 20 years until Java 8, before that everyone was using Joda. As for generics have a look at what C# does for "proper" generics.

Java Time is a renamed Joda Time with some improvements, from the same guy who did Joda Time. It's a pretty great example of Java being defined by its community actually.

Re: Ian Lance Taylor's Response to “Go Is Google's Language”

#325

Post by Crinus » Tue, May 28, 2019, 12:01 PM UTC

fastball wrote: post #205

Crinus wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is splitting hairs, the name is part of the language - it is how you refer to it, you cannot remove it. If i name my implementation Glag it wont be Go, it will be Glag which just happens to be compatible with Go. Someone using my compiler wouldn't be using Go, they'd be using Glag. As such, since the Go name is "protected" then the language itself is "protected" even if the protections allow you to contribute yo…

> If i name my implementation Glag it wont be Go, it will be Glag which just happens to be compatible with Go. Someone using my compiler wouldn't be using Go, they'd be using Glag. Exactly. You're making my point for me.

I'm not sure what point you are trying to make here.

Re: Ian Lance Taylor's Response to “Go Is Google's Language”

#326

Post by amedvednikov » Tue, May 28, 2019, 12:24 PM UTC

sagichmal wrote: post #179

smnscu wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I had made Go, no one would be using it right now. This made me think of this (thank you for reminding me about it, by the way): https://vlang.io/ Really looking forward to see where Alex will take this project.

This is vaporware.

How is it "vaporware" when it's been available for the public for more than a month now? :)

Re: Ian Lance Taylor's Response to “Go Is Google's Language”

#327

Post by [deleted] » Tue, May 28, 2019, 1:50 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #319

geodel wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, but like with the community developed dependency solution, Unless you are deliberately trying to obscure the facts. Sam Boyer et al are no unanimously elected community leaders whose solutions somehow must be included with main distribution. > So it's more like saying "you can have your own niche ports, just don't expect them to become part of the main language". This is exactly same for all open source languag…

> Unless you are deliberately trying to obscure the facts. Sam Boyer et al are no unanimously elected community leaders whose solutions somehow must be included with main distribution. Unless you are deliberately trying to obscure the facts, this is irrelevant. Their project seemingly had the blessing of the core team, it was touted as a community effort, it was adopted and tested by the community at large, it was pr…

[deleted]

Re: Ian Lance Taylor's Response to “Go Is Google's Language”

#328

Post by mrunkel » Tue, May 28, 2019, 4:23 PM UTC

harimau777 wrote: post #320

geodel wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read somewhere on mailing list that there are about ~30 people inside Google working full time on Go. And that is different from engineers working on products built using Go. With infrastructure cost added it would be easily $10 million a year. So these Linkedin/Twitter style thought leaders demanding some kinda OpenGo foundation need to ask if they have capacity to raise this amount consistently over years to star…

Would it be viable to setup some sort of trust at the beginning so that it wasn't necessary to raise that money repeatedly?

Sure, but that means raising 10x+ since you'd really want the trust to be untouched and just have the foundation run off the interest.

Re: Ian Lance Taylor's Response to “Go Is Google's Language”

#329

Post by kragen » Tue, May 28, 2019, 5:46 PM UTC

vorg wrote: post #321

kragen wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My memory of that time is pretty different. I worked as a programmer in the 1990s, when I got paid to write things in C, C++, Perl, Khoros (I guess that's a "visual 4GL"?), IDL (the array language), VB, SQL, INFORMIX's horrible forms thing (which was not especially "visual"), sh, csh (not my fault), and occasionally Tcl. It's true that PHP, Ruby, Tcl, OCaml, and Lua came out in the 1990s (Python is from 1990, so argu…

> Microsoft was pushing VB, which sort of resembles what you're saying, but VB wasn't a 4GL Every marketing department was calling their company's new software development product/language/whatever a "Fourth Generation Language" back then. There's no actual definition for what it really means. Perl, Python, Ruby, and PHP represent a trend that peaked the 1990's, some came before and some after, so there's no need to…

I see! Thanks for explaining your experience in more detail. That does sound a lot more familiar.

Re: Ian Lance Taylor's Response to “Go Is Google's Language”

#330

Post by joemi » Tue, May 28, 2019, 6:36 PM UTC

zemo wrote: post #305

joemi wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the "everyone" in that statement refers to those who are upset. It probably could have been more accurately phrased as "People are upset that Go is Google's language..." As to your not encountering a Go programmer who's mad about this, I think that's because you're considering people who are already programming in Go. I suspect people who care never actually start using Go because of their thoughts on Google'…

> I think that's because you're considering people who are already programming in Go um I talk to a lot of programmers that don't use Go. Most that don't use it decide not to use it because of either the type system ("it's not safe/expressive enough") or the garbage collector. I've never talked to someone that said "Go is technically good and I think it would be a good tool but I won't use it because of Google".

That's fair. I only made that assumption because you specifically said "I have never encountered a Go programmer in real life that is actually mad about this"