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Four years of Go

blog.golang.org

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Re: Four years of Go

#131

Post by robotmay »

craigyk wrote: post #90

I want to like Go. There's definitely some parts that are great, but for a relatively new language there were missed opportunities to adopt awesome features in other PLs. There are also some internal inconsistencies that I find grating. These inconsistencies are particularly irksome given how opinionated Go is (and how much I agree with most of those opinions).

I find a lot of the types quite annoying, like the byte arrays etc. I'm sure I'm missing out on the benefit but it'd be nice to have more human readable variable types. I also found passing JSON around inside it quite awkward, though I'm no doubt just being a bit thick.

Re: Four years of Go

#132

Post by overcyn »

dbaupp wrote: post #57
coldtea wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> None of the languages being compared against were released in the ubiquitous-internet age with things like Github and widespread blogging to drive interest and adoption. Which doesn't seem to matter anyway. There are tons of languages released every year that fare even worse than languages released in 1980, despite having "ubiquitous-internet, Github and widespread blogging" at their disposal.

How many are backed by one of the largest companies on the internet?

What is your point here? This is a blog post celebrating the 4th anniversary of a programming language. Shame on them for being proud of what they created because other languages had a harder time?

Re: Four years of Go

#134

Post by masklinn »

dbaupp wrote: post #18
thrownaway2424 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true. Java in the 90s was a spectacular con job that millions of developers and managers bought hook, line, and sinker. XML was pretty big back then, too, and now nobody gives two warm shits about XML. Just saying. Anyway the hype is surely not the reason why anyone should use go. People should use go because it has good libraries, encourages good interfaces, is fast and space efficient, has good self document…

> Java in the 90s was a spectacular con job that millions of developers and managers bought hook, line, and sinker Who's to say that a similar thing isn't happening with the current latest and greatest tools?

Or even just with Go.

Re: Four years of Go

#136

Post by pjmlp »

pstuart wrote: post #11
donutdan4114 wrote: post #3

I am only a beginner in Go, but what I have done so far, I have loved. It's a great alternative to your typical scripting languages like PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby, Node, etc, etc, etc... And simpler and funner to use than C/C++ IMO. I really hope it keeps gaining momentum.

It will - it's too compelling a proposition.

I doubt it will ever make a dent on the enterprise over the JVM/.NET/C++ stacks, unless a compelling library requiring its use shows up.

Re: Four years of Go

#137

Post by lazyjones »

Skinney wrote: post #42
thrownaway2424 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume you mean in terms of hype? Java can do stuff and people use it which is fine. The con was that it was inherently portable and secure and can be used for client software. None of that is true. Today if someone told me that our new client interface was going to be java that person would be reassigned to a role where their awful judgement would not resurface. Java today is basically the slower edition of C++ wh…

Uhh... The hype is there for a reason. It is inherently portable, because the bytecode can be run everywhere you have a JVM. You don't need to compile for every platform you wan't to run your software in, or muck around with cross-compilers. True, you can do plattform-spesific things in any language, but the Java standards library is almost entirely cross-plattform. In this way, Java really is as cross-platform as it…

> Altough that hype is slowly dying, due to Java (the language, not the vm and ecosystem) being outdated compared to it's competitors.

This part I have some issues with: the language is still quite modern (compared to C, for example). There are several other reasons for its slow demise: its licensing issues and initially problematic Linux implementations put it at a disadvantage on the server side and in circles where open source was important. It is quite verbose and not well-suited for web development - not the best proposition at a time where scripting languages and rapid web prototyping were on the rise. Finally, the enterprisey orientation of later developments around Java and heavyweight ecosystem really put off beginners - editing XML (build.xml bigger than the whole program...) sucks.

Re: Four years of Go

#138

Post by quarterto »

alok-g wrote: post #82
venuzr wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was my initial struggle as well coming into Go (I have worked for several years in C# & Java). You learn to work around this limitation using interfaces for both function parameters and return types. Frankly, I have had to do a little more explicit typecasting that I would have liked (going from interfaces to the actual type) but it is ok.

Are you saying that making sure the type is correct (just before the cast) becomes the programmer's responsibility? How often does this happen?

This is called a type assertion in Go. Whenever you ask for something as an interface but want to use the type's own method, you have to make a type assertion.

  interface Fooer {
    func Foo()
  }

  type Bar struct {}

  func (s Bar) Foo() {}
  func (s Bar) Baz() {}

  func DoFoo(f Fooer) {
    f.Foo() // fine
    // f.Baz() compile error
    f.(Bar).Baz() // fine
  }

Re: Four years of Go

#139

Post by Skinney »

lazyjones wrote: post #137
Skinney wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uhh... The hype is there for a reason. It is inherently portable, because the bytecode can be run everywhere you have a JVM. You don't need to compile for every platform you wan't to run your software in, or muck around with cross-compilers. True, you can do plattform-spesific things in any language, but the Java standards library is almost entirely cross-plattform. In this way, Java really is as cross-platform as it…

> Altough that hype is slowly dying, due to Java (the language, not the vm and ecosystem) being outdated compared to it's competitors. This part I have some issues with: the language is still quite modern (compared to C, for example). There are several other reasons for its slow demise: its licensing issues and initially problematic Linux implementations put it at a disadvantage on the server side and in circles wher…

I'm comparing Java to languages like C#, C++ and Go, and Java is definitely falling behind. Java 8 will be a big improvement, but I'll still miss having variable type-inference (auto in C++, var in C# and Go).

C is supposed to map very easily to what actually happens under the hood. Thus C will never have closures, type-inference, generators and the like as a part of the language. This is a part of the languages design, which is why you shouldn't compare it to feature rich languages like Java or even C++.

Re: Four years of Go

#140

Post by misnome »

coldtea wrote: post #47
misnome wrote: post #2

> "The state of the Go ecosystem after only four years is astounding. Compare Go in 2013 to Python in 1995 or Java in 1999. Or C++ in 1987!" Wow! The state of C++ searches on google were 0 in 1987, as were searches for "Apples" and "Oranges" so go must be doing incredibly well to have infinity times the results!

Who mentioned anything about "C++ searches on google"? There WAS an industry in 1987 and people who are around now were also around then, and can compare how well Go does compared to how well C++ did circa 1987.

But they are so ridiculously far apart that there is absolutely no way you can compare the "uptake" metric without being completely disingenuous.
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