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Go is Google's language, not ours

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Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#11
post #5

Seeing Huawei got recently blacklisted for all US made chips, parts and some Android services from Google, an interesting question to ask is whether the US government will one day force some foreign companies (e.g. Huawei, ZTE and DJI for example) to stop using programming languages invented & implemented by US companies.

That's not how open source works.

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#12
post #6

This. But Go is one in a long line of proprietary languages that those of us who have been around the block know to stay away from. Recently: Java was Sun's, C# is Microsoft's, Swift is Apple's, Go is Google's. With any luck, all will be footnotes in ten years. Those of us who knew better than to get invested in them will be fine. Everyone else gets a chance to learn something.

So what would you recommend?

Assembler^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HMachine code:

http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/mel.html

https://research.swtch.com/mel

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#13
post #6

This. But Go is one in a long line of proprietary languages that those of us who have been around the block know to stay away from. Recently: Java was Sun's, C# is Microsoft's, Swift is Apple's, Go is Google's. With any luck, all will be footnotes in ten years. Those of us who knew better than to get invested in them will be fine. Everyone else gets a chance to learn something.

There is a mind-boggling amount of Java running around the world and more is still being written. Java won't die for several decades at least.

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#15
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that is necessarily true. Rust has only one compiler (and I think adding a second one would be a huge effort with no clear win) yet it is developed by a community that is very welcoming to newcomers. At least, that's been my experience.

It is definitely true. There's virtually no room for improving the underlying compiler toolchain because there's no allowance or support for an alternate implementation (using GCC, for example). Go at least has gcc-go, which is a compliant implementation that gets some benefits from being part of GCC (like not completely broken support for dynamic link libraries!). Having a second compiler implementation forces the l…

How is there no allowance? A lot of people in the community would love a rust compiler that can compile down to C for instance.

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#16
post #6

This. But Go is one in a long line of proprietary languages that those of us who have been around the block know to stay away from. Recently: Java was Sun's, C# is Microsoft's, Swift is Apple's, Go is Google's. With any luck, all will be footnotes in ten years. Those of us who knew better than to get invested in them will be fine. Everyone else gets a chance to learn something.

So what would you recommend?

For what purpose?

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#17
Many like Go because it is an opinionated language. I'm not sure that a 'community' run language will create something like that because there are too many opinions. Many claim to represent the community, but not the community that doesn't share their opinion. Without clear leaders I fear technical direction and taste will be about politics which seems more uncertain/risky.

I like that there is a tight cohesive group in control over Go and that they are largely the original designers. I might be more interested in alternative government structures and Google having too much control only if those original authors all stepped down.

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#18
post #4

To determine how open a language really is look at how many widely used implementations of the compiler there are for the language. If there is only a single implementation of the compiler/interpreter than it is not really open but controlled by that core compiler team.

I don't think that is necessarily true. Rust has only one compiler (and I think adding a second one would be a huge effort with no clear win) yet it is developed by a community that is very welcoming to newcomers. At least, that's been my experience.

Gcc compiles Rust fine. Its borrow checker won't bark at you, but that doesn't affect code generation.

OCaml and Haskell are one-horse towns, with substantial history, that are not going away.

But as Stroustrup says, there are languages people complain about, and languages no one uses. You generally end up better off investing your time in mastering a language people complain about. Bitterly. Once that meant FORTRAN.

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#19
post #6

This. But Go is one in a long line of proprietary languages that those of us who have been around the block know to stay away from. Recently: Java was Sun's, C# is Microsoft's, Swift is Apple's, Go is Google's. With any luck, all will be footnotes in ten years. Those of us who knew better than to get invested in them will be fine. Everyone else gets a chance to learn something.

Java is a footnote?

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#20
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that is necessarily true. Rust has only one compiler (and I think adding a second one would be a huge effort with no clear win) yet it is developed by a community that is very welcoming to newcomers. At least, that's been my experience.

It is definitely true. There's virtually no room for improving the underlying compiler toolchain because there's no allowance or support for an alternate implementation (using GCC, for example). Go at least has gcc-go, which is a compliant implementation that gets some benefits from being part of GCC (like not completely broken support for dynamic link libraries!). Having a second compiler implementation forces the l…

I haven't thought consciously about that, but it turns out that I've been doing that kind of validation unconsciously. I didn't get interested in actally using D, for example, until the GDC variant arrived (Dlang-support in the GCC collection).
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