We don't care you why program in Go.
Why I Program in Go
11–20 of 171 posts
Re: Why I Program in Go
#12I love Go for many of the same reasons as the author. Go's fantastic performance doesn’t' hurt either. :) These micro-benchmarks match what I have seen in the real world: http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/which-programs-...
They sure do. Slower than Scala and requiring more code and lacking the awesome power of the JVM. Great choice, indeed.
Re: Why I Program in Go
#13For the life of me I can't understand why anyone would give up the power (in terms of profiling, monitoring and ecosystem, and somewhat better performance, too) of the JVM, for a language marginally more convenient than Java, and arguably less expressive than other JVM languages. The only thing I could think of is a smaller RAM footprint, if you care about that sort of thing. Whenever Go is compared to Java, the argu…
>Here, too, the author says that he didn't like Java's IDEs (really? does Go have better tooling?
You should really write a GO code to understand what the author means. Writing GO code has no frills. And I have seen nothing cooler than: http://gofmt.com/.
Re: Why I Program in Go
#14Those are many of the same reasons I program in Go. To add another: * Go's build tools and the language's overall approach to building projects are fantastic. For the vast majority of projects you don't need an external build manager like make. One of my least favorite bits of programming in C and C++, even when I was doing that on a daily basis years ago, was the huge morass of make/autoconf hell that would grow up…
I have to agree that this is invaluable.
Re: Why I Program in Go
#15If anyone is interested in learning go, my site has a compiled list of tutorials and so on
http://pineapple.io/resources/tagged/go-language?type=tutori...
Re: Why I Program in Go
#16I love Go for many of the same reasons as the author. Go's fantastic performance doesn’t' hurt either. :) These micro-benchmarks match what I have seen in the real world: http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/which-programs-...
They sure do. Slower than Scala and requiring more code and lacking the awesome power of the JVM. Great choice, indeed.
Yeah- that is great as long as you don't care about using 30x times more memory.... The awesome bloat cough I mean power of the JVM in action.
Go vs Scala: http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/benchmark.php?t...
It will be interesting to re-visit this when Go 1.1 is out as well. Go being even younger than Scala has a lot of low hanging optimization fruit. :)
P.S. If Go didn't exist I would still be using Java/C#/C/C++ for everything. (I still use Haskell/Prolog where needed)
Re: Why I Program in Go
#17For the life of me I can't understand why anyone would give up the power (in terms of profiling, monitoring and ecosystem, and somewhat better performance, too) of the JVM, for a language marginally more convenient than Java, and arguably less expressive than other JVM languages. The only thing I could think of is a smaller RAM footprint, if you care about that sort of thing. Whenever Go is compared to Java, the argu…
>Here, too, the author says that he didn't like Java's IDEs (really? does Go have better tooling? You should really write a GO code to understand what the author means. Writing GO code has no frills. And I have seen nothing cooler than: http://gofmt.com/ .
Even if that's the case, Go just brings too little to the table. And if you think gofmt is cool, take a look at Project Jackpot [1], or its use in the NetBeans IDE [2].
[1] https://bitbucket.org/jlahoda/jackpot30/wiki/Home
[2] http://netbeans.org/kb/docs/java/editor-inspect-transform.ht...
Re: Why I Program in Go
#18For the life of me I can't understand why anyone would give up the power (in terms of profiling, monitoring and ecosystem, and somewhat better performance, too) of the JVM, for a language marginally more convenient than Java, and arguably less expressive than other JVM languages. The only thing I could think of is a smaller RAM footprint, if you care about that sort of thing. Whenever Go is compared to Java, the argu…
My day job involves working with Java and C++ on 10+ year old systems. All of my hobby or side projects are in Go these days with occasional diversions into haskell, ML or various Lisps.
So I'll try to impart some understanding of why I would switch to Go from Java or C++.
First lets get some things out of the way. Go is fast enough and getting faster very quickly and it definitely has a smaller memory footprint. So when compared to java and C++ in those dimensions it holds up just fine but that might not be enough to sway someone over to the Go camp.
It's about what else Go has:
* Go is a batteries included language. The stdlib has almost everything you need to get started much like python does.
* Go is fast for development. I mean really fast. I mean like using Lisp in a REPL fast (almost). I really can't express how fast it's development speed is adequately just trust me its really really fast. This is not just about how fast it compiles although that's part of it. (I've literally been able to write, compile, and run a go "script" faster than an equivalent python script.)
* Go makes concurrency easy to get right. I haven't seen any other language get this so right since Erlang.
* Go is concise. There is no wasted typing. It's easy to read and it's easy to write. Every feature of the language is orthoganal. And it tells you quickly when you've done it wrong.
* Go does OO right. Code reuse through composition not inheritance. Polymorphism through interfaces not inheritance. I never have to worry about it with Go. C++ or java? yeah I've got some inheritance related war stories there.
All of these things exist in other languages but Go is the only language where they all exist together. This is reason enough to switch to Go but there's more.
Go's future is bright. I don't say this because it has celebrity tech people behind it. I say this because the foundation they are laying demonstrates the core team knows what they are doing. Here's some examples.
* Go comes with all the tools you need to programmatically understand Go code. Parser, Type checking, Static analysis is all available via the stdlib. As a result GoCode which adds IDE functionality to the EDITOR of your choice came on the scene very quickly. Java doesn't have this. C++ doesn't have this. Go made it possible to create an IDE as a service with minimal effort. Besides Gocode you also have gofmt. Never worry about code formatting again. gofmt will reformat it for you and it will never break your code. It's 100% safe. I am aware of no other language excepting lisp with this functionality.
Lastly I want to address your "a lot less powerful" comment. I think it's false. In now way is Go less powerful than Java. It's fast enough to be in the same league as java. It has a lower memory footprint than java. It compiles faster than java. And the language itself is if anything more powerful and expressive than java. It has closures, It has interfaces that are just as typesafe and yet easier to use than java.
In fact I'll sum it up in one word: Go is relaxing.
Re: Why I Program in Go
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
They sure do. Slower than Scala and requiring more code and lacking the awesome power of the JVM. Great choice, indeed.
Yeah- that is great as long as you don't care about using 30x times more memory.... The awesome bloat cough I mean power of the JVM in action. Go vs Scala: http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/benchmark.php?t... It will be interesting to re-visit this when Go 1.1 is out as well. Go being even younger than Scala has a lot of low hanging optimization fruit. :) P.S. If Go didn't exist I would still be using Java…
The memory consumption is probably mostly due to the JVM's GC implementation that can be very finely tuned (although large RAM footprint surely is a feature of the JVM). Some of the bloat is, true, baggage that's been accumulated through the years, but that's being taken care of in Java 9. And the rest of the "bloat" is there for a reason. Let me put it this way: if you have a program that absolutely requires JVM performance, it probably requires the "bloat" as well, as it gives you runtime instrumentation, advanced debugging hooks and other sorts of invaluable monitoring tools.
Re: Why I Program in Go
#20For the life of me I can't understand why anyone would give up the power (in terms of profiling, monitoring and ecosystem, and somewhat better performance, too) of the JVM, for a language marginally more convenient than Java, and arguably less expressive than other JVM languages. The only thing I could think of is a smaller RAM footprint, if you care about that sort of thing. Whenever Go is compared to Java, the argu…
My day job involves working with Java and C++ on 10+ year old systems. All of my hobby or side projects are in Go these days with occasional diversions into haskell, ML or various Lisps. So I'll try to impart some understanding of why I would switch to Go from Java or C++. First lets get some things out of the way. Go is fast enough and getting faster very quickly and it definitely has a smaller memory footprint. So…
How did you write a go script faster than a python script? That sounds intriguing.