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Why people in Google hate Go?

news.ycombinator.com

11–20 of 144 posts

Re: Why people in Google hate Go?

#11
post #5

Go puzzles me. It's slower than C/C++/Rust and GCed, so not really suited for performance critical stuff. No OO so not really suited for larger complex applications. So for smaller not-performance-critical programs, why not Python, Typescript etc? It seems that its popularity exceeds its scope, or am I missing something?

The same can be said about Rust: its popularity exceeds its scope, because 99% of applications I see that are written in Rust are better off written in a GCed language.

Re: Why people in Google hate Go?

#12
post #5

Go puzzles me. It's slower than C/C++/Rust and GCed, so not really suited for performance critical stuff. No OO so not really suited for larger complex applications. So for smaller not-performance-critical programs, why not Python, Typescript etc? It seems that its popularity exceeds its scope, or am I missing something?

No OO?

Re: Why people in Google hate Go?

#13
post #11
post #5

Go puzzles me. It's slower than C/C++/Rust and GCed, so not really suited for performance critical stuff. No OO so not really suited for larger complex applications. So for smaller not-performance-critical programs, why not Python, Typescript etc? It seems that its popularity exceeds its scope, or am I missing something?

The same can be said about Rust: its popularity exceeds its scope, because 99% of applications I see that are written in Rust are better off written in a GCed language.

Except when you suddenly do need performance and predictable latency but all your software is written in python. Its always funny how these performance requirements just creep up on you like that.

Re: Why people in Google hate Go?

#14
post #5

Go puzzles me. It's slower than C/C++/Rust and GCed, so not really suited for performance critical stuff. No OO so not really suited for larger complex applications. So for smaller not-performance-critical programs, why not Python, Typescript etc? It seems that its popularity exceeds its scope, or am I missing something?

And still has null pointer exceptions. I could see a role for it in between like rust and python if it had a sane type system.

Re: Why people in Google hate Go?

#15
I am not a functional programming fanatic, but I do appreciate all the functional constructs making their way into less esoteric languages. Such as map/reduce and in general working with immutables.

Golang does not have this and it makes me feel like programming with only one hand. In particular when working with data and aggregations.

I am prepared to be corrected, I have only looked briefly at golang, so I am happy to give golang proponents a chance to shine!

Re: Why people in Google hate Go?

#16
post #4

Go isn't a serious language for large systems. The language allows writing shitty code and the community has largely adopted that. Go fanatics will hate this, but you simply can't compare it with the ability to write and maintain in languages like Java.

Can you give an example of 'shitty code'? We've got murmurs of Go being adopted by some teams so if you have first hand experience it'd be really useful

Single letter variables. A terrible pattern the go community picks up.

Re: Why people in Google hate Go?

#18
post #5

Go puzzles me. It's slower than C/C++/Rust and GCed, so not really suited for performance critical stuff. No OO so not really suited for larger complex applications. So for smaller not-performance-critical programs, why not Python, Typescript etc? It seems that its popularity exceeds its scope, or am I missing something?

And still has null pointer exceptions. I could see a role for it in between like rust and python if it had a sane type system.

I really like Go but the type system is just a bit too weak in my opinion. It is the biggest issue I have with the language ( and the fact that errors are basically untyped, you can type them but no one does…)

Re: Why people in Google hate Go?

#20
post #5

Go puzzles me. It's slower than C/C++/Rust and GCed, so not really suited for performance critical stuff. No OO so not really suited for larger complex applications. So for smaller not-performance-critical programs, why not Python, Typescript etc? It seems that its popularity exceeds its scope, or am I missing something?

I don't use Go since it's from Google but I wouldn't say that Go / Java can't be used for performance critical stuff? There are a lot of values that goes into "performance critical stuff". For me, it can mean a chat app / money transfers etc that is performance critical but is is of course not as critical as in flight software or other system control software where GC could mean deaths.

I meant speed-critical by that, sorry if that was unclear. I see opinions like "1/3 the speed of C" bandied around, not bad but means a big model run takes three days rather than one.
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