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Go 1.4 is released

blog.golang.org

111–120 of 265 posts

Re: Go 1.4 is released

#111
post #98
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am you there. Mercurial was more friendly to us Windows developers. But with Microsoft embracing Git this isn't any longer the case.

Git is equally hostile to everyone! Long live Git. (Maybe the way to advance the poor Gui user interaction experience is to write frontends for it?)

If they're smart, Perforce will integrate their UI tools with Git. They have by far the best UI for a Git-style SCM.

Re: Go 1.4 is released

#113
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it was Rob Pike who later said he regretted using the term "systems programming" to describe Go. They never meant the phrase to mean purely operating system tools and programs (ie. not web applications or interactive end-user applications), which would be rather limiting. Instead, he said he said they meant it as a language for composing systems, as for example a typical SOA web site may be, or even for appli…

Real systems programming would be possible with a little more help. Meaning a few more operations exposed in unsafe. The problem is that the average developers never saw Oberon line of languages or are unaware how much of libc is actually written in Assembly. Maybe with Go 1.5 fully re-written in Go, it will be easier to sell this scenario.

According to Github 8.4% of glibc is written in assembly. You would actually expect that to be an over estimate, since assembly is guaranteed to be machine dependent.

Re: Go 1.4 is released

#114
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And now things just got interesting. I'll put my money on the availability of Go on Android being the catalyst for its future hockey stick growth.

They'd have to make Dalvik a compiler target. Could work, though.

They are targeting (1) helper libraries compiled natively (2) full screen games compiled natively. Not Dalvik.

Re: Go 1.4 is released

#117
post #73

There is a new range syntax[1]. The release notes say it's rarely used, but makes code cleaner. In which cases would the syntax be useful? [1] https://golang.org/doc/go1.4#forrange

If they added support for `range 10` to iterate 0-9 this would be useful for doing things a certain number of times. Now it's probably mostly useful for emptying iterators.

Why do they need to add support for this?

it already exists...

https://github.com/bradfitz/iter/blob/master/iter.go

Re: Go 1.4 is released

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because we want a good code review system, and GitHub doesn't have that. More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8715529 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8605204

Gerrit looks pretty horrid to use to be honest.

Its UI can appear clunky in some ways, but once you get the hang of its nuances code review is very clear and easy to manage.

Re: Go 1.4 is released

#119
post #54

This relatively recent trend of company-specific languages annoys and disturbs me. I don’t ever want to be tied to a language and library ecosystem under the thumb of a single (large) corporation. Not Visual Basic, not .NET, not C#, not Objective C, not Go (It’s even named after the company, for crying out loud! Yes it is. Don’t try to claim otherwise). I’ve used Basic, I’ve used Pascal, I’ve used C, I’ve used Python…

If the non-company-specfic languages cannot keep up with the evolution company-specific languages show they will have a problem getting or keeping their users. I know it takes a lot of investment to build great tools, do marketing, evolve a language etc and currently some large companies seems to think that they get more of what they want by funding their own languages. If someone fund the free languages they same wa…

There are certainly advantages for companies to develop languages in-house, but there are also, as I wrote, disadvantages for outside developers to use that company-specific language. This lesson was learned long ago about assembly languages and machine code: If you could program the Burroughs Whatzit 220, you could not program the Data General WhizJig 3000, and all the software ecosystem you (and others) had written over the years became obsolete when technology advanced. This was a large part of why programming languages were invented, and why they were always meant to be platform and vendor independent – so that this would not happen again¹.

It’s possible that we are due for another generation of developers to make the same journey of discovery of why vendor-specific technology solutions have larger drawbacks than what is initially apparent.

① This is also, incidentally, why Unix proliferated as an operating system – it was and is, for all intents and purposes, a vendor-independent platform for development at the operating system level.

Re: Go 1.4 is released

#120
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While technically true, this has almost nothing to do with what I wrote. Huge code bases thrown over the wall, while technically “open source” does not a community make. A language named after a company with the overwhelming majority of development sponsored by that same company is not something you realistically envision someone forking, so the fear I spoke of is still there. Now, if the language was, say, maintaine…

Have you actually observed the Go community and how Go has been developed over the last five years? What you are saying are fair concerns in the abstract, but I cannot reconcile them with the reality of how the Go project operates. You also seem unusually hung up on its name. It's not like it's called Google Programming Language All Access.

I see from another comment that this release first happened, and then, afterward, the release was pushed to its “official” Git repository. This is not the way real open projects do releases, and instead indicates that the real development is done in-house and the code thrown over the wall.

A name is important, as it is a symbol. As long as the language is called “Go”, Google will always have power over it, no matter who actually does most of the work, and thus the fear will still be there. (Yes, “Go” is symbolically the same as “Google Programming Language All Access”. It’s as if Microsoft released something called “MSCode”.)

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