Why We Use Go
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Why We Use Go
1–10 of 49 posts
Re: Why We Use Go
#2> Previously, we worked almost exclusively with Python, and after a certain point, it becomes a nightmare. You can bend Python to your will. You can hack it, you can monkey patch it, and you can write remarkably expressive, terse code. It’s also remarkably difficult to maintain and slow.
Performance aside which is a weak point of python, the language is certainly not inherently unmaintainable. My most maintainable and enjoyable projects are all in Python, you just have to not do stupid things which would make any project unmaintainable (like say no to spaghetti inheritance).
Re: Why We Use Go
#3> It’s not all that different from your users requesting features after you release a product and telling those users they aren’t smart enough to use them.
Wanted to address this point separately. This sort of design is something you will find very often in well-designed video games: authors saying no to good features because they'll be misused and/or, on a grander scale, hurt the product.
I've enjoyed the little I played with Go. I can't comment on its simplicity/complexity nor the devs' design choices, but I don't think it's "toxic" as the author says, it's just a different way of developing a language. We need more projects doing this; I have rarely seen this be the downfall of any product - and when it is, it's usually because the design team is incompetent, which I definitely don't think the Go team is.
Re: Why We Use Go
#4> Previously, we worked almost exclusively with Python, and after a certain point, it becomes a nightmare. You can bend Python to your will. You can hack it, you can monkey patch it, and you can write remarkably expressive, terse code. It’s also remarkably difficult to maintain and slow. Performance aside which is a weak point of python, the language is certainly not inherently unmaintainable. My most maintainable an…
> My most maintainable and enjoyable projects are all in Python, you just have to not do stupid things which would make any project unmaintainable (like say no to spaghetti inheritance).
That's what they all say though. Low level, high level, static or dynamically typed -- it's not a problem as long as you don't do stupid stuff.
Re: Why We Use Go
#5> It’s not all that different from your users requesting features after you release a product and telling those users they aren’t smart enough to use them. Wanted to address this point separately. This sort of design is something you will find very often in well-designed video games: authors saying no to good features because they'll be misused and/or, on a grander scale, hurt the product. I've enjoyed the little I p…
Games seem to have a shorter lifespan[1] than PLs. Certainly from an economical perspective. Does the design have to be perfect? No -- just make a good enough game and then make a sequel that incorporates slightly other ideas (and that is always inferior to the original, apparently... or was that for movies).
[1] Surviror bias note: we might mostly tend to compare newfangled languages to well-established languages, ignoring all the ones that have fallen by the wayside from our perspective.
Re: Why We Use Go
#6> Previously, we worked almost exclusively with Python, and after a certain point, it becomes a nightmare. You can bend Python to your will. You can hack it, you can monkey patch it, and you can write remarkably expressive, terse code. It’s also remarkably difficult to maintain and slow. Performance aside which is a weak point of python, the language is certainly not inherently unmaintainable. My most maintainable an…
> My most maintainable and enjoyable projects are all in Python, you just have to not do stupid things which would make any project unmaintainable (like say no to spaghetti inheritance). That's what they all say though. Low level, high level, static or dynamically typed -- it's not a problem as long as you don't do stupid stuff.
[deleted]
Re: Why We Use Go
#7> Previously, we worked almost exclusively with Python, and after a certain point, it becomes a nightmare. You can bend Python to your will. You can hack it, you can monkey patch it, and you can write remarkably expressive, terse code. It’s also remarkably difficult to maintain and slow. Performance aside which is a weak point of python, the language is certainly not inherently unmaintainable. My most maintainable an…
> My most maintainable and enjoyable projects are all in Python, you just have to not do stupid things which would make any project unmaintainable (like say no to spaghetti inheritance). That's what they all say though. Low level, high level, static or dynamically typed -- it's not a problem as long as you don't do stupid stuff.
But it seems more true with python. Maybe because it's more expressive and terse, maybe because there is no magic (scope is always clear), and also, PEP8, which new languages tend to emulate and even formalise with linter such as gofmt.
Re: Why We Use Go
#8> Previously, we worked almost exclusively with Python, and after a certain point, it becomes a nightmare. You can bend Python to your will. You can hack it, you can monkey patch it, and you can write remarkably expressive, terse code. It’s also remarkably difficult to maintain and slow. Performance aside which is a weak point of python, the language is certainly not inherently unmaintainable. My most maintainable an…
> My most maintainable and enjoyable projects are all in Python, you just have to not do stupid things which would make any project unmaintainable (like say no to spaghetti inheritance). That's what they all say though. Low level, high level, static or dynamically typed -- it's not a problem as long as you don't do stupid stuff.
Bet you ten bucks that any large scale programs (>60k LoC) in brainfuck is unmaintainable -- it's quite obvious that there are certain languages that are more maintainable than other, stupid stuffs or not.
Re: Why We Use Go
#9> this kind of does sound like Go is a disservice to intelligent programmers
Because intelligent programmers only use overly complex, obscure and hard to maintain (preferably functional) programming languages? I don't get it.
Re: Why We Use Go
#10> Previously, we worked almost exclusively with Python, and after a certain point, it becomes a nightmare. You can bend Python to your will. You can hack it, you can monkey patch it, and you can write remarkably expressive, terse code. It’s also remarkably difficult to maintain and slow. Performance aside which is a weak point of python, the language is certainly not inherently unmaintainable. My most maintainable an…
> My most maintainable and enjoyable projects are all in Python, you just have to not do stupid things which would make any project unmaintainable (like say no to spaghetti inheritance). That's what they all say though. Low level, high level, static or dynamically typed -- it's not a problem as long as you don't do stupid stuff.
There is no language which is going to prevent you from shooting yourself in the foot. At best they will make sure the bullet is not also poisoned.
However, there are a lot of languages which encourage bad patterns (like mixing app and view logic, or implicitly convert arrays into numbers when comparing them to strings or something, he said, referring to no language in particular). Python is not one of those languages. Use it as a tool, not a toy, and it will easily help you produce very high quality, maintainable results.
Take a look at this for example, 1 year old hobby project of mine on which I still work daily - some of my most maintainable code. I have never, with any other language, experienced such joy at refactoring massive parts of a project given how easy it has been. https://github.com/jleclanche/fireplace