What Golang Is and Is Not

Post by karma_vaccum123 » Sun, Aug 21, 2016, 7:49 PM UTC

xiaoma wrote: post #116

jksmith wrote: post #78

What we like to keep missing is that golang innovates not as a language, but as a tool to contribute to software project success. Project success in the software industry is abysmal, and we still keep thinking we can spin up another language that will contribute to project success because it let's us express ourselves in new ways. Well, how's that working out so far? The reason why golang appears to have such wide ad…

Go has been around nearly a decade with the backing of none less than Google and yet it remains a fairly fringe language. Elixir is on a much steeper adoption curve. So is Swift, but Elixir doesn't even have a tech heavyweight behind it.

Post by gens » Sun, Aug 21, 2016, 7:53 PM UTC

vertex-four wrote: post #120

seagreen wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who writes Go every day for work, I can't agree that Go is simple. You may be confusing "simple" with "good". A simple solution to a complex problem may not be a good one. Go can be simple and still not a great solution because it pushes complexity to a higher level.

I think there's a difference between "simple" and "simplistic", and people don't often get it.

Post by karma_vaccum123 » Sun, Aug 21, 2016, 7:58 PM UTC

tinco wrote: post #57

soulbadguy wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> haskell is among the best of them There is little need for this kind of absolutism. Citing a haskell as one the best language in a contest where op ask about rust and c++ is dangerous. To op : if your domain calls for modeling relatively 'type stable computation', and need strong correctness garanty, haskell is a great match.

How is it dangerous? Your qualifying remarks with regards to Haskell's domain make no sense. If you need a fast, compiled language with managed memory, high ease of development and a strong ecosystem then you can't go wrong with Haskell. 'Type stable computation' and a strong correctness guarantee are some added benefits of Haskell, though any strongly typed language (like for example Rust) will have these qualities.…

Post by geodel » Sun, Aug 21, 2016, 8:20 PM UTC

pcwalton wrote: post #88

dilap wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go allocates on the heap unless it can prove something doesn't escape, in which case it's on the stack. Not explicit programmer control, but I think you can reasonably make it do what you want. Because it exposes pointers as a first-class concept, you also have good control of how data is laid out in memory (=> locality). It's not like Python or Java where everything is a pointer and gets spread out all over memory.

> Not explicit programmer control, but I think you can reasonably make it do what you want. Escape analysis, like any such analysis, gets much more difficult in the presence of higher-order control flow. Currently the Go compilers punt on higher order control flow analysis. And Go uses higher-order control flow in spades, due to its heavy reliance on interfaces. The end result is that lots of stuff is heap allocated.…

Post by oautholaf » Sun, Aug 21, 2016, 8:31 PM UTC

behnamoh wrote: post #128

I'm not a Golang programmer, but the mere fact that GOOG decided Java for android is convincing enough that even GOOG does not believe in its Go. (Frankly, I doubted that a little, until I realized Al-*-Go was not actually written in Go!)