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The Go Programming Language and Environment

cacm.acm.org

41–50 of 250 posts

Re: The Go Programming Language and Environment

#41
post #33

Easy, - Backed by Google - Plan 9 and UNIX people as designers - Docker migrated from Python to Go - Kubernetes migrated from Java to Go - After Docker and Kubernetes explosion, all Cloud Native Foundation projects start using the same language, thus adoption

> - After Docker and Kubernetes explosion, all Cloud Native Foundation projects start using the same language, thus adoption

This take sounds highly unrealistic.

No one in their right mind would ever say "well Docker/Kubernetes were developed in Go, thus that means it's a good idea to develop a totally unrelated application that bares no resemblance or shares any use case in Go as well".

Also, migrating away from an interpreted language to a compiled one to develop performance-minded applications does not mean that the compiled language is suddenly spectacular. It just means the initial proof of concept ran it's course.

Re: The Go Programming Language and Environment

#42
post #30

I think it misses * Made by really famous veteran language designers * Backed by Google Not saying it doesn't deserve its popularity, but most of the things listed are not necessary for explaining its popularity, and none of them (even taken together) are sufficient.

In my case "backed by Google" was a deterrent, not a feature. I gave the language a chance after trying Rust (backed by Mozilla - which was a feature to me ;-) and I found it easy to start. Go is very well documented: That was the killer feature for me. No more search tutorials / videos etc. - just get the go book, read it, and start coding. Of course there are tutorials and videos everywhere for fun stuff. But good…

I agree here.

Using the two examples go and rust, Go's documentation is on another level compared to rust, it's more common to see examples in Godoc's than in Rust documentation... That's not a failure of Rust or the maintainers, it's just a different culture I guess.

If I want to do something in Go with a new lib, i can easily put together what I need to do using the documentation.

Where as with Rust, it's often confusing to the point where if they don't have an examples folder on the library, I'm shit out of luck understanding how to do something.

Re: The Go Programming Language and Environment

#43
post #2

Weird article. It's basically an 'edited highlights' summary of another article, which it references. Here's the original: https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2022/5/260357-the-go-programm... I guess this is what passes for journalism, these days.

And the original article is better. For example, it mentions a huge contributor many commenters have pointed out:

> Google's name was undoubtedly a draw.

Re: The Go Programming Language and Environment

#44
post #33

Easy, - Backed by Google - Plan 9 and UNIX people as designers - Docker migrated from Python to Go - Kubernetes migrated from Java to Go - After Docker and Kubernetes explosion, all Cloud Native Foundation projects start using the same language, thus adoption

I had no idea Docker and Kubernetes migrated. I assumed they were both Go from the onset.

Yes,

When Docker migrated away from LXC the new code was in Go,

https://www.infoq.com/news/2014/03/docker_0_9/

Kubernetes moved when some Go advocates joined the team and pushed for a rewrite,

https://archive.fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/kubernetesclu...

Re: The Go Programming Language and Environment

#45
post #30

I think it misses * Made by really famous veteran language designers * Backed by Google Not saying it doesn't deserve its popularity, but most of the things listed are not necessary for explaining its popularity, and none of them (even taken together) are sufficient.

In my case "backed by Google" was a deterrent, not a feature. I gave the language a chance after trying Rust (backed by Mozilla - which was a feature to me ;-) and I found it easy to start. Go is very well documented: That was the killer feature for me. No more search tutorials / videos etc. - just get the go book, read it, and start coding. Of course there are tutorials and videos everywhere for fun stuff. But good…

Note that Golang is older than Rust. When it came out it made a splash, despite not having any books or videos yet, despite not having any libraries available yet. It didn't die in obscurity (like someone else's "Go" language that existed before!) precisely because it had names of Rob Pike & Google associated with it.

Re: The Go Programming Language and Environment

#46
post #30

I think it misses * Made by really famous veteran language designers * Backed by Google Not saying it doesn't deserve its popularity, but most of the things listed are not necessary for explaining its popularity, and none of them (even taken together) are sufficient.

In my case "backed by Google" was a deterrent, not a feature. I gave the language a chance after trying Rust (backed by Mozilla - which was a feature to me ;-) and I found it easy to start. Go is very well documented: That was the killer feature for me. No more search tutorials / videos etc. - just get the go book, read it, and start coding. Of course there are tutorials and videos everywhere for fun stuff. But good…

Google doesn't have the best track record of maintaining their projects, but I've had a similar experience with Android/Kotlin. Always had a dislike for "strong" OOP, but then had to do a small android app for a university project, and the tutorials, documentation and tooling for Android with Kotlin were pretty amazing. This took away most of the problems of understanding the syntax/language and gave me the leeway and motivation to get a better understanding of the concepts. My dislike for OOP is now at least partially cured.

Re: The Go Programming Language and Environment

#47

Started a project in Golang this week. Looked into web frameworks and was underwhelmed. Settled with Echo as it seems to have the only decent documentation. Still no good templating library, will settle with html/template and try to add something else for template inheritance. (I chose Golang for the best async scheduler and the very fast compile times).

Go has the same problem as Python when it comes to web frameworks.

It's just so easy to whip op your own middleware on top of the standard library, so there is no One True Option for middleware/framework.

Re: The Go Programming Language and Environment

#48
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was about to say the same thing. Go is popular because it's initiated and backed up by Google.

If that were enough Angular would be more popular than it is.

> If that were enough Angular would be more popular than it is.

What are you talking about? Angular is already one of the two major frontend frameworks, the other one being Facebook-backed React.

A couple of years ago Angular was the undisputed popularity king, to boot.

Re: The Go Programming Language and Environment

#49
1 - Golang was created for sub-average programmers, thus half of us soon discovered a way to ship more bugs around, more quickly.

2 - Many unlucky ones in the other half found themselves stuck in environments where the former half was over-represented.

Re: The Go Programming Language and Environment

#50
post #41
post #33

Easy, - Backed by Google - Plan 9 and UNIX people as designers - Docker migrated from Python to Go - Kubernetes migrated from Java to Go - After Docker and Kubernetes explosion, all Cloud Native Foundation projects start using the same language, thus adoption

> - After Docker and Kubernetes explosion, all Cloud Native Foundation projects start using the same language, thus adoption This take sounds highly unrealistic. No one in their right mind would ever say "well Docker/Kubernetes were developed in Go, thus that means it's a good idea to develop a totally unrelated application that bares no resemblance or shares any use case in Go as well". Also, migrating away from an…

The amount of Go projects in Cloud Native Foundation shows otherwise.

Most people pick languages based on platforms, not a language in isolation and go hunting for projects.

As for the point migrated to a compiled language from Python, if it wasn't for the shinny thing, the migration would have been to a compiled language with proven record in prodution like C and C++, as it is common on the ecosystem.

And regarding Java, everyone that actually knows the ecosystem is aware of AOT compilers since 20 years now, even if they have been available as commercial only for the most part.

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