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How We Went from 30 Servers to 2: Go

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Re: How We Went from 30 Servers to 2: Go

#231

Post by timr »

jbooth wrote: post #221
timr wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not Invented Here syndrome goes away with general experience. It doesn't come back every time you switch to a new language. Just because I've never written Erlang doesn't mean that I will automatically try to write a random-number generator (say) the first time I need one in Erlang. I have enough experience to look for a library function first. Empirically, NIH tends to be more common in single-language developers, n…

I wasn't talking about NIH syndrome, I was talking about "I don't know that a common library exists for this standard use-case so I'm going to write my own one-off because I have a job to do". I mean, you can google for libraries but sometimes you just don't find them and then find out a few weeks later what you should have used.

I don't know that a common library exists for this standard use-case so I'm going to write my own one-off because I have a job to do.

That's called "laziness", and is even more likely than NIH syndrome to be mitigated by experience. Certainly, having lots of coding time with a single language doesn't make you less lazy, and having lots of experience with different languages doesn't make you lazier.

Re: How We Went from 30 Servers to 2: Go

#232

Post by trungonnews »

jlarocco wrote: post #203
trungonnews wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go as of today doesn't have too many libraries available. So there is really nothing to learn besides the language itself.

That's not really true. Granted Go doesn't have as many libraries as the more established languages, but to say there aren't many and there's "nothing to learn besides the language" is just flat out wrong. Just for starters there's http://code.google.com/p/go-wiki/wiki/Projects

A seasoned Java developer is expected to have worked with one of the mainstream ORM like Hibernate or Ebean. But a Go developer gets away with not having to know an ORM because there is no mainstream ORM in Go. :)

Re: How We Went from 30 Servers to 2: Go

#233

Post by trungonnews »

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #228
trungonnews wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what the other gophers say too. Java has interfaces too, but it also has Mockito that makes testing much easier. You should look into it. Mocking library will help reduce boiler code. You would know that if you had used one.

>You would know that if you had used one. Cute.

My bad. :)

Re: How We Went from 30 Servers to 2: Go

#234

Post by pkulak »

rurounijones wrote: post #211

Ok, this bit has left me confused. They were Java devs that liked ruby, they wrote applications in Ruby on Rails and the ruby apps were hitting limits so they immediately started looking at other languages. But they don't mention the most obviously (to my mind) simple option. JRuby It is ruby (They like ruby). Most ruby apps can be run on JRuby with very very little changes (No need for a big rewrite) and it runs on…

In my experience, rewriting for JRuby is as much work as re-writing in a new language. Last I looked was a year or two ago, so it may have all changed, but it's not as simple as just moving your code over. Many really important gems don't work, or don't work properly.

Re: How We Went from 30 Servers to 2: Go

#235

Post by kamaal »

TillE wrote: post #30
shurcooL wrote: post #20

> "We also weren't sure if we would be able hire top talent if we chose Go, but we soon found out that we could get top talent because we chose Go." I feel[1] that a smart/talented C/C++/anything developer can go from someone who has never seen or heard of golang to a proficient and productive Go developer in a matter of a few weeks, maybe even _days_, if not less. That's how long it takes to go through the following…

It's quite strange to me that people would identify as or look for a "[language] programmer". Sure, I happen to write more C++, Python, and C than anything else, but I've dabbled in just about everything and could reach comfortable proficiency in a matter of weeks. Most of programming and all of computer science is universal. Any serious programmer should be a polyglot by default.

>>Any serious programmer should be a polyglot by default.

The quality of a serious programmer is to get things done. Not tool tricks.

When I go out to hire a carpenter, I just ask him to show me some of his work. If I like it I buy from him or hire his services. I don't go around and ask him to demonstrate how he uses a hammer.

Re: How We Went from 30 Servers to 2: Go

#236

Post by kyllo »

chadcf wrote: post #224
mjn wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My intro programming course (in high school) was in C++, and I think it would've scared me off programming entirely if I hadn't picked up mIRC-script (a very different language) on my own as a hobby. There is so much accidental complexity in C++ that it's a pretty terrible introductory language. We literally spent several weeks of the semester on how to get input and output to work properly through the giant mess tha…

Me too (well, ok, my first programming class was in Fortran taught by a 85 year old man who spent most of the time telling us about how much harder it was back when you had to use fortran). I hated C++. I still think it's a fairly terrible language. But, for fun I took the Harvard CS50 course to refresh my knowledge of C and I found that WAY better than my C++ course. I think C is brilliant for introducing programmin…

C++ is terrifying, and teaching an introductory programming course in C++ is an awful idea. Using plain C would make much more sense. C is also a better choice than Java because Java doesn't force you to learn about pointers, or memory in general, really. Countless Java bugs are introduced by programmers who don't understand what operations give you a copy of something, and which ones give you a reference to something (especially if that something is mutable).

I also think Objective-C is pretty good though, especially with the addition of ARC. It's like a better C, with Smalltalk-style objects and a lot more (mutable and immutable) datatype options. Much saner and less painful than C++, but more challenging than Java.

Re: How We Went from 30 Servers to 2: Go

#237

Post by kamaal »

SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #223
TillE wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's quite strange to me that people would identify as or look for a "[language] programmer". Sure, I happen to write more C++, Python, and C than anything else, but I've dabbled in just about everything and could reach comfortable proficiency in a matter of weeks. Most of programming and all of computer science is universal. Any serious programmer should be a polyglot by default.

>Any serious programmer should be a polyglot by default. My own experience is that there are PLENTY of programmers who have used, say, PHP and Python, but who you wouldn't want to touch your C codebase in a pair-programming session. If you've used C++ and C, then sure, you can probably jump to just about any language. Someone who's only used Python (or worse, Java or PHP) will likely be a danger to themselves and oth…

Starting out with Python as a newbie is disastrous.

I started out with assembly, then went to C and then all the C-family based languages. Non C-family languages are actually rare enough to neglect for 99% of all programming tasks today.

Always remember going from something difficult to simple is easy, but going from something simple to difficult is not easy.

Re: How We Went from 30 Servers to 2: Go

#238

Post by willismichael »

eru wrote: post #222
georgeorwell wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks guys, I guess I really have had some rough times. I like how Lisp and Assembler at the top of the hierarchy capture the two extremes. Some hypothetical language in the middle would be great, but maybe the best we can do is to straddle that point, e.g. with C++ and Python.

> I like how Lisp and Assembler at the top of the hierarchy capture the two extremes. Not really. I'd place Agda or Coq above Lisp.

I'm already having a hard enough time convincing the team at work to use Clojure!

Re: How We Went from 30 Servers to 2: Go

#239

Post by kamaal »

kyllo wrote: post #74
TillE wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's quite strange to me that people would identify as or look for a "[language] programmer". Sure, I happen to write more C++, Python, and C than anything else, but I've dabbled in just about everything and could reach comfortable proficiency in a matter of weeks. Most of programming and all of computer science is universal. Any serious programmer should be a polyglot by default.

This is why Joel Spolsky correctly observed that the replacement of C/C++ and functional languages with Java in university CS curricula is a tragedy. If you don't understand pointers or recursion, you are not a polyglot and you cannot pick up just any language in a matter of weeks. The "[language] programmer" (where [language] usually = Java or .NET) trend is a misguided attempt by industry to commoditize programmer…

The problem complicates further with the fact that IDE fever grips you very early on while using a language like Java.

When I started with eclipse + Java, within hours my perception of Java was that it was really more of 'fill up the blanks' rather than programming.

Re: How We Went from 30 Servers to 2: Go

#240

Post by boundlessdreamz »

pkulak wrote: post #234
rurounijones wrote: post #211

Ok, this bit has left me confused. They were Java devs that liked ruby, they wrote applications in Ruby on Rails and the ruby apps were hitting limits so they immediately started looking at other languages. But they don't mention the most obviously (to my mind) simple option. JRuby It is ruby (They like ruby). Most ruby apps can be run on JRuby with very very little changes (No need for a big rewrite) and it runs on…

In my experience, rewriting for JRuby is as much work as re-writing in a new language. Last I looked was a year or two ago, so it may have all changed, but it's not as simple as just moving your code over. Many really important gems don't work, or don't work properly.

The only gems that do not work are those which are not pure ruby. For the popular gems I think there have been rewrites. I haven't looked into JRuby but it has changed quite a bit in the last year from what I read
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