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Why We Switched from Python to Go (2021)

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Re: Why We Switched from Python to Go (2021)

#121

Post by snapetom »

yedpodtrzitko wrote: post #5

So they switched to Go from Python, because of following advantages: #1 Performance #2 Performance (to make the list longer I guess?) #5 Fast compile time... which is an advantage over Python how exactly? #7 Strong ecosystem... which brings us to disadvantage #1 - lack of frameworks (?)

I'm surprised they didn't mention #1 implies a cost benefit, or maybe they don't use it at scale in certain areas that it matters. I worked with one company that switched from Python to Go. They went from twenty-one instances of their load-balanced API servers to seven, saving a few thousand dollars every month.

Re: Why We Switched from Python to Go (2021)

#122

Post by ptx »

claytonjy wrote: post #73
caymanjim wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Python is a pretty terrible language to work with. Tooling sucks. Dependency conflicts are common. There's no test framework/runner worth a damn. Web frameworks are inferior to those in most other languages. If you're doing data science things, it's hard to beat pandas/numpy. I get that those are popular in that community because the barrier to entry with Python is low. People who are just looking for a tool to solve…

Of things you mention I feel the testing part the most. I started python recently enough that I've only ever used pytest, but something about it just feels too...magical? I'm holding out hope for a new test framework that I'd feel more at home with, but I'm not aware of any such projects; do they exist?

You could give the built-in unittest module [1] a try. It's less magical (although also less flexible) and many of its old limitations that people used to cite as advantages of pytest (e.g. built-in test discovery) have since been fixed.

[1] https://docs.python.org/3/library/unittest.html

Re: Why We Switched from Python to Go (2021)

#123

Post by todotask »

yedpodtrzitko wrote: post #5

So they switched to Go from Python, because of following advantages: #1 Performance #2 Performance (to make the list longer I guess?) #5 Fast compile time... which is an advantage over Python how exactly? #7 Strong ecosystem... which brings us to disadvantage #1 - lack of frameworks (?)

There is a new framework, still infancy, bud, which was recently shared on Reddit and you can watch the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoypcRqn-xA

Plenty of other frameworks which you have a specific framework is lacking in the Go ecosystem?

Re: Why We Switched from Python to Go (2021)

#124

Post by rascul »

eesmith wrote: post #98
Xeoncross wrote: post #63

I always wondered why Stream was using Python instead of Go. Glad to hear they are able to make the change now. There is no comparison between Go and my Python or Node.js services when it comes to data processing or pipelines. > Revel, Iris, Echo, Macaron and Buffalo seem to be the leading contenders. If you're talking about MVC-era frameworks these are fine. However a lot of companies are using Go for microservices…

> Glad to hear they are able to make the change now This was written 4 ½ years ago.

It's dated Wednesday, March 3 2021. Is there another date I missed?

Re: Why We Switched from Python to Go (2021)

#125

Post by alephnan »

> Disadvantage 2 – Error Handling

I'm by no means a Go expert, but it felt like Go forced consistent error handling.

> Another issue is that it’s easy to forget to handle an error by accident

Does anyone have specific examples of error scenarios that skip through the cracks?

> While this approach works, it’s easy to lose scope of what went wrong to ensure you can provide a meaningful error to your users. The errors package solves this problem by allowing you to add context and a stack trace to your errors.

Isn't this effectively just having propagating error Object that you stack context into ?

On the one hand, I agree something like this should "be supported by the language" or rather forced especially since Go supposed to be opinionated, but on the other hand I appreciate having flexibility.

Re: Why We Switched from Python to Go (2021)

#126

Post by eesmith »

rascul wrote: post #124
eesmith wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Glad to hear they are able to make the change now This was written 4 ½ years ago.

It's dated Wednesday, March 3 2021. Is there another date I missed?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31517109

Re: Why We Switched from Python to Go (2021)

#127

Post by gnulinux »

uhtred wrote: post #86
atx42 wrote: post #52

I think Go and Angular should have died, and would already be footnotes in programming history if they had not been introduced by Google. Let's make procedural programming great again? I get it, you can compile it and it has concurrency, but there's better alternatives in my mind, unfortunately not as popular.

Go should have died?! didn't Go come out like yesterday? This is why I am hesitant to invest time in new hot thing languages. I swear in 20 years everything important will still be written in C, PHP, Perl, C#, Java, Python (how could I forget JavaScript).

> I swear in 20 years everything important will still be written in C, PHP, Perl, C#, Java, Python (how could I forget JavaScript).

Hmm all the languages you listed have certain niches that I think will likely remain alive in the next 20 years, except I don't think Perl deserves this spot. I think anything Perl is a great fit at, Python will also be a great fit and (subjectively) python code ends up being strictly more readable than perl.

I would guess PHP also has a similar relationship to Python but the effect, I believe, is a lot milder as PHP shops seem to be more decisive about sticking with PHP. All evidence anecdotal of course.

Re: Why We Switched from Python to Go (2021)

#128

Post by corrral »

iainmerrick wrote: post #40
mcdonje wrote: post #14

>[Go] is almost as fast as languages like C++ and Java. It seems like only a couple of years ago when Java's speed was the butt of many a joke. The JVM has come a long way. As someone who doesn't work in Java and doesn't have a horse in this race, I find their turnaround impressive.

Hmm, I feel like that’s been the case for more than a couple of years. Java has been fast for well over 10 years, I’d say. But I think Java also still has the problem that it tends to use a ton of memory (unless you use it the fintech way, manually wrangling your data in arrays rather than using lots of objects). My subjective impression is that garbage collected languages have gone through a bit of a rise and fall o…

> Hmm, I feel like that’s been the case for more than a couple of years. Java has been fast for well over 10 years, I’d say.

It got the reputation in part because once upon a time Java programs were noticeably slow and heavy on resource use, no matter how many times Java fans posted micro-benchmarks of Java finding digits of Pi to "prove" Java was fast and we must all be imagining things. In actual fact, in the real world, it was slow.

I think improving hardware has more to do with its feeling faster now, than anything else. Hardware got fast enough that it no longer feels (as) slow. Plus its competition, as far as GUI programs go, now prominently includes Electron. On the server, we deploy tens or hundreds of megabytes of container or VM and associated overhead to run a 2MB program. So also, everything else has gotten far more bloated and heavy, making Java look better by comparison.

Re: Why We Switched from Python to Go (2021)

#129

Post by KaiserPro »

As with all of these posts, the big reason is never really written:

"I just wanted to learn a new language"

Now, the points they've made are valid, Go concurrency beats the pants off python, and with gofmt, there is less of a debate about style.

Te bit about finding a team is pure horse cock. As they point out there are a bunch of C++/C programmers about. There are even more python programmers too. Go is a tiny pond compared to the big three (c, java, python).

Re: Why We Switched from Python to Go (2021)

#130

Post by jvolkman »

llanowarelves wrote: post #76
caymanjim wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Python is a pretty terrible language to work with. Tooling sucks. Dependency conflicts are common. There's no test framework/runner worth a damn. Web frameworks are inferior to those in most other languages. If you're doing data science things, it's hard to beat pandas/numpy. I get that those are popular in that community because the barrier to entry with Python is low. People who are just looking for a tool to solve…

You're right. The thing I want is a good monorepo solution for Python. There's at least 3 for JavaScript. As much hate as JS gets, its package managers are also much better than Pip. In order to manage complexity of Python as you do your big projects, you really need to do "enterprisey" patterns like DI. Even though it's rare for Python programmers to write like that. Re: test runner: pytest is pretty good

What are you looking for in a monorepo solution?
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