Python Is Easy. Go Is Simple. Simple != Easy • Hacker News Board

Re: Python Is Easy. Go Is Simple. Simple != Easy

#21

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Nov 27, 2023, 5:03 PM UTC

avgcorrection wrote: post #14

phplovesong wrote: post #4

No matter what your opinion is about Go (as a language), but they nailed it for bigger projects. Go code always looks the same, performance is predictable and fast enough for most programs, and its really, really easy to be productive. When i picked up Go i basically got shit done without ever having written a single line of Go. Its statically typed (with generics yey!) and compiles very fast. Its easy to create smal…

> No matter what your opinion is about Go (as a language), but they nailed it for bigger projects. I don’t understand this template? 1. No matter your opinion on X: 2. Opinion Y is true about X! If all you have are compliments about X: just go directly to (2). You’re not making a begrudging concession, after all.

[deleted]

Re: Python Is Easy. Go Is Simple. Simple != Easy

#22

Post by farresito » Mon, Nov 27, 2023, 5:04 PM UTC

phplovesong wrote: post #4

No matter what your opinion is about Go (as a language), but they nailed it for bigger projects. Go code always looks the same, performance is predictable and fast enough for most programs, and its really, really easy to be productive. When i picked up Go i basically got shit done without ever having written a single line of Go. Its statically typed (with generics yey!) and compiles very fast. Its easy to create smal…

IMO, Go is a mediocre language with great tooling and a great company behind it, and it turns out ultimately if you don't have the latter, the former is irrelevant.

Re: Python Is Easy. Go Is Simple. Simple != Easy

#23

Post by packetlost » Mon, Nov 27, 2023, 5:05 PM UTC

farresito wrote: post #22

phplovesong wrote: post #4

No matter what your opinion is about Go (as a language), but they nailed it for bigger projects. Go code always looks the same, performance is predictable and fast enough for most programs, and its really, really easy to be productive. When i picked up Go i basically got shit done without ever having written a single line of Go. Its statically typed (with generics yey!) and compiles very fast. Its easy to create smal…

IMO, Go is a mediocre language with great tooling and a great company behind it, and it turns out ultimately if you don't have the latter, the former is irrelevant.

Most developers are mediocre, so having a language that can match the skill level of the average dev is a win for many situations, no?

Re: Python Is Easy. Go Is Simple. Simple != Easy

#24

Post by pif » Mon, Nov 27, 2023, 5:06 PM UTC

phplovesong wrote: post #4

No matter what your opinion is about Go (as a language), but they nailed it for bigger projects. Go code always looks the same, performance is predictable and fast enough for most programs, and its really, really easy to be productive. When i picked up Go i basically got shit done without ever having written a single line of Go. Its statically typed (with generics yey!) and compiles very fast. Its easy to create smal…

> they nailed it for bigger projects.

Yeah, indeed, big projects did not exist before!

Re: Python Is Easy. Go Is Simple. Simple != Easy

#25

Post by eddtries » Mon, Nov 27, 2023, 5:07 PM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #3

Yeah, but the amount of boilerplate one must read and write in Go is frustrating, even compared to Java.

Go is so boring that I found AI tooling to start being far more effective, fwiw

Re: Python Is Easy. Go Is Simple. Simple != Easy

#26

Post by xanamander » Mon, Nov 27, 2023, 5:07 PM UTC

vore wrote: post #19

rargon wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? Having defer statements and error returns vs. dealing with exceptions gives Go the win all by itself. And then there is the business of being able to make a type automagically satisfy an interface. (Java may have fixed some of the agony of creating classes just to satisfy a required interface. Last I used Java, it didn't have delegates and whatnot.)

Go doesn't really warn you if you forget to handle an error return, which in my experience continuing silently in the face of error conditions is far scarier than crashing loudly.

That would not be a compile error, but these sorts of issues are why you should also run `go vet` and `golint` for a healthy codebase

Re: Python Is Easy. Go Is Simple. Simple != Easy

#27

Post by ajayvk » Mon, Nov 27, 2023, 5:08 PM UTC

Starlark in go https://github.com/google/starlark-go is a great way to combine the best of both, the ease of use of Python and the simplicity of go.

I have been building a platform for deploying internal web applications using this approach https://github.com/claceio/clace. Use Starlark to configure the application, the platform itself is built in go.

Re: Python Is Easy. Go Is Simple. Simple != Easy

#28

Post by starttoaster » Mon, Nov 27, 2023, 5:09 PM UTC

vore wrote: post #19

rargon wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? Having defer statements and error returns vs. dealing with exceptions gives Go the win all by itself. And then there is the business of being able to make a type automagically satisfy an interface. (Java may have fixed some of the agony of creating classes just to satisfy a required interface. Last I used Java, it didn't have delegates and whatnot.)

Go doesn't really warn you if you forget to handle an error return, which in my experience continuing silently in the face of error conditions is far scarier than crashing loudly.

Check out ErrCheck. It's a static analysis tool that detects exactly this. We added it to our common Makefile that we use for testing/building Go projects. Typically I have it test for this among other things before I commit, and then it runs again in CI scripts before a merge to main is allowed.

In my experience, if you're not checking errors, then you're often just going to crash loudly. Likely at a similar point that the comparable Python would have had its runtime error. In my experience, if Go would have continued silently, the comparable Python might also just continue silently anyway.

Re: Python Is Easy. Go Is Simple. Simple != Easy

#29

Post by kyrra » Mon, Nov 27, 2023, 5:09 PM UTC

ingoaf wrote: post #5

phplovesong wrote: post #4

No matter what your opinion is about Go (as a language), but they nailed it for bigger projects. Go code always looks the same, performance is predictable and fast enough for most programs, and its really, really easy to be productive. When i picked up Go i basically got shit done without ever having written a single line of Go. Its statically typed (with generics yey!) and compiles very fast. Its easy to create smal…

Don't forget the fact that it doesn't have this overbloated concept of inheritance and polymorphism of let's say Java where you have to look through 6 files to understand what's even going on. Even generics in Go were a heated debate because they make the language more complex. All in all Go was created by geniuses and it shows.

It depends on what libraries you use and how you structure your code. Yes, you can create inheritance hell within Java code. But you can also use composition (what Go uses) within Java and create sane code bases.

Inheritance is a foot gun that got overused in the '90s and early 2000s. But people have learned mostly to avoid it unless really needed.

Re: Python Is Easy. Go Is Simple. Simple != Easy

#30

Post by zimpenfish » Mon, Nov 27, 2023, 5:10 PM UTC

ingoaf wrote: post #5

phplovesong wrote: post #4

No matter what your opinion is about Go (as a language), but they nailed it for bigger projects. Go code always looks the same, performance is predictable and fast enough for most programs, and its really, really easy to be productive. When i picked up Go i basically got shit done without ever having written a single line of Go. Its statically typed (with generics yey!) and compiles very fast. Its easy to create smal…

Don't forget the fact that it doesn't have this overbloated concept of inheritance and polymorphism of let's say Java where you have to look through 6 files to understand what's even going on. Even generics in Go were a heated debate because they make the language more complex. All in all Go was created by geniuses and it shows.

> it doesn't have this overbloated concept of inheritance and polymorphism of let's say Java where you have to look through 6 files to understand what's even going on

Several Go codebases I've worked on would like a word. Some Go people really love their interfaces and abstractions and making sure every method is only 3 lines and pretty soon you're 20 files and three type hierarchies deep trying to figure out what a single HTTP handler actually does.