Rob Pike interview • Hacker News Board

Re: Rob Pike interview

#251

Post by kovac » Fri, May 01, 2020, 8:27 AM UTC

zeroc8 wrote: post #247

kovac wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't beat yourself up for that. I tried Go sometime back (year or so may be) and found it an awkward language. It probably has its own design philisophy may be that I missed. Things like lack of generics and type system makes you repeat things quite a lot (e. g. It was pretty impossible to write a true ORM or a DI system in go). I found the interface system quite awkward in that types implicitly implement an interfa…

I came from C++, where accidentally changing the wrong header file resulted in a 2 hour long build cycle. No thanks. Modern C++ has its good parts, but Go has made me enjoy the profession again.

Interesting you said that. Recently, I started doing some work in C++ again to stay up to date with what's going on in the C++ world. Do you really feel it's not worth it? I'm thinking about something new to do, and C++ is what I picked. I started implementing a TUI email client.

The build time of C++ can be really long. I noticed it too.

Re: Rob Pike interview

#252

Post by theshrike79 » Fri, May 01, 2020, 8:31 AM UTC

zerpelin68 wrote: post #209

5cott0 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a language designed to be opaque to casual examination Is this really the case? I thought the prevailing wisdom is that Go was designed to be as simple as possible so newbs can pick it up faster. I find Go to be quite easy to read and follow along with even though I've never written a line of it. Rust on the other hand...

opaque to casual examination means that you simply cannot read the code. You would think that a statically compiled binary blob wouldn't be handled as if it was a perl script, but it is.

And Perl isn't opaque to casual examination? :D

Re: Rob Pike interview

#253

Post by mseepgood » Fri, May 01, 2020, 11:31 AM UTC

vmchale wrote: post #39

the language of choice for people who enjoy writing a sort function five times.

You're mistaking the sort interface for the actual sort function.

Re: Rob Pike interview

#254

Post by mseepgood » Fri, May 01, 2020, 11:34 AM UTC

adtac wrote: post #102

half the comments don't make any sense anymore because of the title change

It shows that lots of people only read the title, not the content.

Re: Rob Pike interview

#255

Post by mseepgood » Fri, May 01, 2020, 11:37 AM UTC

cletus wrote: post #43

floren wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Go was originally envisioned as a systems programming language. It was often called "a better C". This exposed Rob Pike's lack of experience in the area (IMHO) because anyone who had done any systems programming at all knew that garbage collection made any systems language a nonstarter. Yeah, Rob Pike and Brian Kernighan definitely lacked experience in C and systems programming.

AFAIK Brian Kernighan was never involved with the development of Go. He just likes to try new things and wrote a book about it. Rob Pike is probably most famous for his involvement in Plan9 (prior to this). I honestly don't know what this experience entailed.

> AFAIK Brian Kernighan was never involved with the development of Go.

I think he meant Ken Thompson.

Re: Rob Pike interview

#256

Post by tapirl » Fri, May 01, 2020, 12:09 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #249

tapirl wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is true that the k8s project uses many Java patterns, and this really hurts the readability, but there are also many leaf great packages in Go style in the code base. At least, I think, k8s proves the ability of Go runtime.

Proves what? It could have been written in almost any language.

The runtime needs to be performance, script languages are out.

Re: Rob Pike interview

#257

Post by tapirl » Fri, May 01, 2020, 12:14 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #248

tapirl wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go is the main language in Uber.

And me thinking I was on the Dropbox thread. Regarding Uber, one tree doesn't make a forest.

Not a large forest, https://github.com/golang/go/wiki/GoUsers, but it expands fastly.

Re: Rob Pike interview

#258

Post by tapirl » Fri, May 01, 2020, 12:18 PM UTC

apta wrote: post #250

tapirl wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This not true for new companies, for example, Dropbox and Uber.

Those are more the exception than the norm, and their decisions to do so come at significant costs.

At least from what I know, Go is an important factor making Dropbox/Uber/Cloudflare succeed. Go is absolutely not an exception in successful startups.

Re: Rob Pike interview

#259

Post by [deleted] » Fri, May 01, 2020, 12:32 PM UTC

sswezey wrote: post #216

jpgvm wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whilst I generally agree with this it's definitely the case that experience leads you to prefer certain tools over others even when they may both be usable for a specific task. i.e Go is relatively well suited for a simplistic web service. But even if I don't expect to need to extend it I would still prefer to write it in something that is more extension friendly than Go. Therein lies the problem. Go actually isn't b…

I like the lack of enterprise layers that Java espouses, the simply deploys of a single binary, built in support for JSON and a perform at HTTP server. A code base that is accessible from the high level all the day to the fundamentals of the standard library. If I can’t find documentation, I can read Go code and grok it instantly. There is one style - gofmt style. Honestly, I rarely need genetics and I prefer the sim…

[deleted]

Re: Rob Pike interview

#260

Post by apta » Fri, May 01, 2020, 3:09 PM UTC

tapirl wrote: post #258

apta wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are more the exception than the norm, and their decisions to do so come at significant costs.

At least from what I know, Go is an important factor making Dropbox/Uber/Cloudflare succeed. Go is absolutely not an exception in successful startups.

I know people in at least one of the companies you mentioned, and things look very different on the inside. They succeeded despite of the language, not because of it.