I want off Mr. Golang’s Wild Ride (2020) • Hacker News Board

Re: I want off Mr. Golang’s Wild Ride (2020)

#11

Post by greybox » Thu, Apr 28, 2022, 1:53 PM UTC

I've been using go for a personal project for a few months now and it didn't take very long for me to run into the: > It is a minefield of subtle gotchas that have very real implications

The generics problem isn't solved with the introduction of generics either. What they have introduced feels limiting in ways that will solve none of the problems that I have had to deal with by using large amounts of code replication to avoid having to use reflection.

I like go because it provides a good WebServer STL, besides that, for my next web project I'm going back to using C++ or Erlang.

Re: I want off Mr. Golang’s Wild Ride (2020)

#12

Post by duckerude » Thu, Apr 28, 2022, 1:54 PM UTC

marc_from_ibg wrote: post #6

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I don't think this article intends to give a full appraisal of Go. It highlights the downsides of a particular philosophical stance Go takes.

That stance is very much real, even if it's best described by gesturing at half a dozen examples. And it's nothing new, really. It's just Worse is Better all over again. I think it's instructive to see how it plays out in Go.

This rant is one-sided, but it doesn't pretend to be otherwise.

Re: I want off Mr. Golang’s Wild Ride (2020)

#13

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Apr 28, 2022, 2:07 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: I want off Mr. Golang’s Wild Ride (2020)

#14

Post by jitl » Thu, Apr 28, 2022, 2:10 PM UTC

marc_from_ibg wrote: post #6

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I don’t think this rant is toxic - there’s no personal attacks or rude words of any sort, and the tone is lighthearted - but it is all criticism. Maybe that’s enough to qualify it as toxic.

However, the author has real Go bonafides, he wrote many of these libraries: https://github.com/itchio?q=&type=all&language=go&sort=

I presume working on the above software burned some deep scars. Their switch from Go to Rust is motivated by this kind of issue.

(To be honest, I also stopped writing Go for fun because these kinds of paper cuts build up. I enjoy Go when writing stuff in its sweet spot - dealing mostly with network bytes in a server environment of my choosing. For me, venturing too far out of that domain is joyless, but not exactly painful.)

Re: I want off Mr. Golang’s Wild Ride (2020)

#15

Post by rad_gruchalski » Thu, Apr 28, 2022, 2:11 PM UTC

DrBazza wrote: post #8

andrew_ wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a "Go guy" but I try to keep up on the news. They've since added generics and cleaned up some of this since 2020 yeah?

This submission came up because the article author is on twitter today complaining about golang and posted the submission link.

So they wanted out in 2020 and they’re still on in 2022. So either the language isn’t really that bad or they have an attention deficit?

Re: I want off Mr. Golang’s Wild Ride (2020)

#16

Post by Sparkenstein » Thu, Apr 28, 2022, 2:11 PM UTC

marc_from_ibg wrote: post #6

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I am curious, please do send the fair evaluation, or the mistakes in this post if there are any.

Re: I want off Mr. Golang’s Wild Ride (2020)

#17

Post by phoehne » Thu, Apr 28, 2022, 2:11 PM UTC

Everything is a question of tradeoffs. I have to deal with cross-platform Go code on a small project at work. The requirements are modest and the Windows file system code is mostly for developer testing. The production system is Linux. Yes, it's sometimes not pretty and Go was clearly designed for Posix style file systems. We chose Go is that it is fairly high level, it gets the job done, and we don't have to worry about what's in the runtime on the box (e.g. library or package dependencies). It suits our needs. The other options we have (e.g. statically compiled, native C/C++, Rust, or more weirdos like Ada) just aren't as fit for the job. I also ran into the same problems using Afero for unit testing. Moral of the story - pick the right tool for the job or abstract it out a layer and make it fit better.

Re: I want off Mr. Golang’s Wild Ride (2020)

#18

Post by zamalek » Thu, Apr 28, 2022, 2:13 PM UTC

marc_from_ibg wrote: post #6

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> toxic

The author presents things about the language that they don't like. How on earth is that "toxic?"

Have we reached the point where "toxicity" is just "things I don't like hearing?"

Re: I want off Mr. Golang’s Wild Ride (2020)

#19

Post by avestura » Thu, Apr 28, 2022, 2:14 PM UTC

marc_from_ibg wrote: post #6

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Can you please elaborate on why you think it's toxic?

Re: I want off Mr. Golang’s Wild Ride (2020)

#20

Post by moralestapia » Thu, Apr 28, 2022, 2:20 PM UTC

andrew_ wrote: post #4

> It is a minefield of subtle gotchas that have very real implications Perfectly describes my 10+ years with the Node ecosystem. Not that it's a bad thing necessarily. I've made it my niche and the knowledge I've accumulated has made for a great career. But still, I understand the narrative.

Could you share a few of them?