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Go is my hammer, and everything is a nail

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Re: Go is my hammer, and everything is a nail

#61

Post by jimbokun »

DarkNova6 wrote: post #4

If all you know is a Hammer… I was searching for reasons why to use the Go-Hammer when there are comparable ones such as Java, C#, etc. but the article left me wanting. It strikes me that Go is riding the peak of hype languages, succeeding Rust and Node.js (which are all good pieces of technology and absolutely have their merit). And like with most hype driven decisions there is little (self) awareness of context and…

I'll give it a shot.

The tools make a lot of decisions for you that are pretty arbitrary, like how to format code, freeing up brain cycles for other things.

It compiles very fast, so the iteration cycle is similar to a dynamic language with a REPL. Very little time between making a change, running and seeing the new result. The language is designed from the bottom up for fast compile times even in large projects, with features at odds with fast compilation rejected.

Decent sized community and library ecosystem.

The networking APIs are very simple and productive. More and more back end code is being written in Go for this reason.

The semantics are straight forward. The other programming environment I need to deal with at work is Spring Java, which is unjustifiably complex and obfuscated for what it does. Go allows you to read the code and run the program in your head understanding semantics and performance characteristics.

Builds single file executables that are simple to deploy.

Has just enough high level features to be productive without compromising above points about simplicity, fast compiles, and comprehensibility. Channels and go routines work very well to model concurrency across a wide array of problem domains.

Maintainers are careful about adding new features. Generics took a long time to arrive, but when it did was very well thought out and did not negatively impact performance very much.

I'm sure I'll think of more.

Re: Go is my hammer, and everything is a nail

#62

Post by omeid2 »

At the peak of my honeymoon phase with Golang, I went down this path too, and oh boy does it feels great and liberating, like finding a magic bullet, but soon as you start to scratch beyond the surface and dig deeper, you will find yourself trying to screw screws with a hammer, or tie your shoes with a chainsaw and ungodly things like that.

No tool deserves more love or loyalty than the productivity it brings, anything more is infatuation and a game for naive and the fool.

Re: Go is my hammer, and everything is a nail

#63

Post by kasey_junk »

kamaal wrote: post #54
danielvaughn wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just began using Go literally 2 days ago, but I could already see building most of my projects in it from here on out. It has the type system I'd need from Java or C#, while being almost as simple and readable as Python. I love the module system so far and enjoy not having to decide on my own formatter. Go is perfectly boring and simple, and seems to get out of my way. At least, that's how it feels as a newcomer. I…

What about the absence of exception handling? Plus OO has its own advantages, even if you don't use it all that much, its one of the best ways to fit problems into neat design patterns. Go seems to be missing those features.

Go has exceptions and exception handling in the form of panics and recovers, but go devs are discouraged from using them.

Go also supports most of the typical attributes of oo. It has polymorphism and encapsulation it’s just missing inheritance and uses composition instead. Most Java and C# code basis have stayed away from inheritance (for a long time) so there isn’t that big a difference.

Re: Go is my hammer, and everything is a nail

#64

Post by jimbokun »

danielvaughn wrote: post #39
markusw wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't aiming for that. My point is more: I know Go already, it's good enough for my purposes, so I'm using that as my hammer. I could just as well have been Java or C# I learned eight years ago and used that for everything. :)

I just began using Go literally 2 days ago, but I could already see building most of my projects in it from here on out. It has the type system I'd need from Java or C#, while being almost as simple and readable as Python. I love the module system so far and enjoy not having to decide on my own formatter. Go is perfectly boring and simple, and seems to get out of my way. At least, that's how it feels as a newcomer. I…

I've been using it for work projects for a year or two now and I still feel the same way as you.

Re: Go is my hammer, and everything is a nail

#65

Post by alemanek »

DarkNova6 wrote: post #4

If all you know is a Hammer… I was searching for reasons why to use the Go-Hammer when there are comparable ones such as Java, C#, etc. but the article left me wanting. It strikes me that Go is riding the peak of hype languages, succeeding Rust and Node.js (which are all good pieces of technology and absolutely have their merit). And like with most hype driven decisions there is little (self) awareness of context and…

I am someone with significant experience in Java, C#, C++, and JS/TS. I am a bit of a newbie to Go but have used it for a few things at work. So, I can give a bit of a comparison for you.

I really like the DevX and strong standard library of Go. Also I really like that the community around Go has a strong preference for just using the stdlib and not going crazy with third party libraries.

Languages are just tools but I have a strong preference for Go for backend services and CLI applications now. Just my 2cents.

Re: Go is my hammer, and everything is a nail

#66

Post by busterarm »

tail_exchange wrote: post #44
busterarm wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bazel. While not Go-specific, it's the extremely popular option in the space and I've seen it bring many-a-seasoned wizard to their knees in tears. Also managing your go dependencies if you cargo-cult other Google behaviors like monorepos tends to be painful. Basically just cargo-culting Google behavior == pain. Choosing golang can often be part of this behavior pattern.

Bazel is not a Go default either. You can get very far just by using the default Go Modules, and this is much more common than repos using Bazel. Throw some Makefiles and shell scripts in the mix, if that's your thing, and that's perfectly fine.

Obviously but if you look at a lot of Go projects you tend to see it.

Especially in a corporate space. It should be obvious that I'm referring to things that you see in a professional environment with professional standards. I'm getting a lot of hate where that seems to be lost on people.

And even if someone is a solo developer I don't assume that they don't ever have to work with other people's code -- that certainly wasn't my experience when solo contracting.

Re: Go is my hammer, and everything is a nail

#67

Post by markusw »

omeid2 wrote: post #62

At the peak of my honeymoon phase with Golang, I went down this path too, and oh boy does it feels great and liberating, like finding a magic bullet, but soon as you start to scratch beyond the surface and dig deeper, you will find yourself trying to screw screws with a hammer, or tie your shoes with a chainsaw and ungodly things like that. No tool deserves more love or loyalty than the productivity it brings, anythi…

It's not really about Go, I think. But it makes me productive, and I like that. I don't think it's a magic bullet at all. Lots of things annoy me about it. But it's _good enough_ for quite a lot of things IMO.

But tying shoes with a chainsaw does sound kinda fun. :D

Re: Go is my hammer, and everything is a nail

#68

Post by Cthulhu_ »

kamaal wrote: post #54
danielvaughn wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just began using Go literally 2 days ago, but I could already see building most of my projects in it from here on out. It has the type system I'd need from Java or C#, while being almost as simple and readable as Python. I love the module system so far and enjoy not having to decide on my own formatter. Go is perfectly boring and simple, and seems to get out of my way. At least, that's how it feels as a newcomer. I…

What about the absence of exception handling? Plus OO has its own advantages, even if you don't use it all that much, its one of the best ways to fit problems into neat design patterns. Go seems to be missing those features.

? It doesn't have exceptions, so it doesn't need exception handling. It has an error system / standard that isn't based on exceptions.

I only know exceptions from Java myself, and in practice, what it calls exceptions are often... well, not exceptions at all. Files missing, SQL queries returning no errors, division by zero are not exceptional situations, but normal day to day events. And an exception generates a stack trace, which is an expensive operation.

I mean one way to avoiding that is defensive programming - check if a file exists, do a count on the SQL query first, do a pre-check or assertion before dividing - but that adds more and more code that you need to write, test and maintain.

OO has merit for what you describe, but Go's alternative works just as well (imo) for that purpose; you have struct types containing data, you can add methods to those types to encapsulate behaviour. Go doesn't have OO inheritance, but inheritance has been out of fashion for years now so it's not missed.

TL;DR, exceptions and OO are solutions to problems, Go has its own solutions to those problems, neither of which are difficult to understand.

Re: Go is my hammer, and everything is a nail

#69

Post by jimbokun »

kamaal wrote: post #54
danielvaughn wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just began using Go literally 2 days ago, but I could already see building most of my projects in it from here on out. It has the type system I'd need from Java or C#, while being almost as simple and readable as Python. I love the module system so far and enjoy not having to decide on my own formatter. Go is perfectly boring and simple, and seems to get out of my way. At least, that's how it feels as a newcomer. I…

What about the absence of exception handling? Plus OO has its own advantages, even if you don't use it all that much, its one of the best ways to fit problems into neat design patterns. Go seems to be missing those features.

In modern Java applications, interfaces are favored much more heavily than OO designs relying on inheritance.

And Go has very nice support for interfaces. To the extent you don't even need to declare support for an interface. Go just figures it out if your type supports all the methods in the interface.

If you mean classical Smalltalk style OO, no Go doesn't support that, but neither do Java or C# or C++.

Re: Go is my hammer, and everything is a nail

#70

Post by jimbokun »

danielvaughn wrote: post #56
kamaal wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the absence of exception handling? Plus OO has its own advantages, even if you don't use it all that much, its one of the best ways to fit problems into neat design patterns. Go seems to be missing those features.

This is my first time working with a language that exclusively uses errors as values, and I haven't had time to develop any strong feelings about it. So far it feels nice because it makes error handling crystal clear, but I could also see it becoming cumbersome over time.

It can get verbose, but I'm willing to live with it for all the other benefits of the language.
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