Google Go: Good For What?

#1

Post by neya » Thu, Sep 13, 2012, 2:56 PM UTC

Google Go: Good For What?
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Re: Google Go: Good For What?

#2

Post by melling » Thu, Sep 13, 2012, 3:39 PM UTC

How good is the Go optimizer? I would guess that there's still a lot of room for improvement because that's not something you'd spend a lot of time on early in the life of a language.

Re: Google Go: Good For What?

#3

Post by tptacek » Thu, Sep 13, 2012, 3:40 PM UTC

From a previous Go blog post by the same author:

Go decided to use a foreign syntax to C++, C and Java programmers. They borrows forward declarations from BASIC (yep, you heard me right…BASIC), creating declarations that are backwards from what we’ve been using for close to 20 years

"Yep, you heard me right... BASIC". Consider carefully how seriously you want to take this blog.

Re: Google Go: Good For What?

#4

Post by theatrus2 » Thu, Sep 13, 2012, 3:45 PM UTC

melling wrote: post #2

How good is the Go optimizer? I would guess that there's still a lot of room for improvement because that's not something you'd spend a lot of time on early in the life of a language.

Basically, not much (depending on which compiler chain you are using). The Plan9 based compilers (which compile at light speed) don't produce great code.

Re: Google Go: Good For What?

#5

Post by sidcool » Thu, Sep 13, 2012, 4:02 PM UTC

A gross and incorrect generalization. It should have been:

Go: Good here, bad there.

Re: Google Go: Good For What?

#6

Post by wtetzner » Thu, Sep 13, 2012, 4:04 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #3

From a previous Go blog post by the same author: Go decided to use a foreign syntax to C++, C and Java programmers. They borrows forward declarations from BASIC (yep, you heard me right…BASIC), creating declarations that are backwards from what we’ve been using for close to 20 years "Yep, you heard me right... BASIC". Consider carefully how seriously you want to take this blog.

I haven't written any Go, but the FAQ (http://golang.org/doc/go_faq.html#principles) says:

"There are no forward declarations and no header files; everything is declared exactly once."

Is the author just wrong, or has the language changed since the FAQ was last updated?

Re: Google Go: Good For What?

#7

Post by hevyw8 » Thu, Sep 13, 2012, 4:05 PM UTC

It's worth noting that this post is from December 2009.

Re: Google Go: Good For What?

#8

Post by mpolun » Thu, Sep 13, 2012, 4:06 PM UTC

The argument here doesn't seem to be whether or not Go is a good programming language (what I would describe as what it's good for), but rather whether it will become popular.

One has very little to do with the other.

Re: Google Go: Good For What?

#9

Post by thirsteh » Thu, Sep 13, 2012, 4:07 PM UTC

melling wrote: post #2

How good is the Go optimizer? I would guess that there's still a lot of room for improvement because that's not something you'd spend a lot of time on early in the life of a language.

People interested in generating more optimized machine code (more slowly) should check out gccgo, which is a GCC frontend for Go, rather than the default (fast) gc compiler suite.

Re: Google Go: Good For What?

#10

Post by aaronblohowiak » Thu, Sep 13, 2012, 4:07 PM UTC

theatrus2 wrote: post #4

melling wrote: post #2

How good is the Go optimizer? I would guess that there's still a lot of room for improvement because that's not something you'd spend a lot of time on early in the life of a language.

Basically, not much (depending on which compiler chain you are using). The Plan9 based compilers (which compile at light speed) don't produce great code.

They don't produce great code because they are optimized for compilation speed. IIRC, the plan is to have your quick to compile compiler and your fast execution time compiler..