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Go is an ideal language for AI-assisted software engineering

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Re: Go is an ideal language for AI-assisted software engineering

#151

Post by rubiquity »

jibal wrote: post #141
rubiquity wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're misreading what I said. I didn't say other languages don't have buggy Raft/Paxos implementations, just that Go is yet to yield a single correct one.

I think you're projecting. You wrote > Go still has not yielded a correct implementation of Raft or Paxos while there are dozens in Java, C++, and Rust. That says that there are correct (i.e., bug-free) implementations in those languages. The GP noted > "we’ve found bugs in every Raft implementation we’ve tested, ..." which says that there aren't any correct ones. You then wrote > I didn't say other languages don't h…

The intersection of the set of Raft libraries Antithesis tested and all Raft libraries in existence do not fully overlap. I personally have worked on multiple proprietary ones that Antithesis would not have access to.

Re: Go is an ideal language for AI-assisted software engineering

#152

Post by jeanbza »

jatins wrote: post #108
jdw64 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, I see. I misunderstood.Is the report from an internal source, so it can't be shared? If not, I'd appreciate it if you could send me a link so I can look into it too.

it’s probably just some informal Slack messages between colleagues that is being described as “reports from users”. There is no Report here

Yes, this. =) I talk to Go users around the company all the time. Their feedback has been in this direction for a bit now.

Re: Go is an ideal language for AI-assisted software engineering

#153

Post by allset_ »

melodyogonna wrote: post #59
jeanbza wrote: post #27

Definitely agree with this article. At Netflix, I lead the Go language guild. We've been seen increasing reports of users finding their AI agents writing better Go code than other languages, and increasing reports of projects favouring Go over other languages. Two additional notes I'll add: - Go has _great_ resources on writing good Go code, including treasure troves at https://go.dev/doc/effective_go and https://goo…

Isn't Netflix a Java shop

Large companies use more than one language.

Re: Go is an ideal language for AI-assisted software engineering

#154

Post by dzonga »

jeanbza wrote: post #27

Definitely agree with this article. At Netflix, I lead the Go language guild. We've been seen increasing reports of users finding their AI agents writing better Go code than other languages, and increasing reports of projects favouring Go over other languages. Two additional notes I'll add: - Go has _great_ resources on writing good Go code, including treasure troves at https://go.dev/doc/effective_go and https://goo…

Go wins for simplicity. however what I have seen is companies end up going with Java coz it's simple enough - not simple as Go, but simple enough + fast enough.

though the letdown with Java is the wider ecosystem that makes unwarranted contraptions out of simple things.

Re: Go is an ideal language for AI-assisted software engineering

#156

Post by odo1242 »

henrymerrilees wrote: post #133
Buttons840 wrote: post #55

I'd argue Go is not on a "Pareto frontier" and that no matter how you value the various attributes of programming languages, a fair assessment will never select Go. A simple example is: if you highly value language popularity; Go is not most popular. If you highly value a type system that catches errors; Go's type system catches fewer errors than others. Etc. There is no weighted sum of attributes that will select Go…

Is there a language that you would argue is at least as good as Go at everything and better than Go in at least one thing? That would be the most straightforward way to argue against its Pareto optimality. Listing particular sets of preferences for which Go is not optimal is not sufficient unless you can show the list to be exhaustive.

I'm not GP, but for me that would be TypeScript. TypeScript's tooling is as good as Go's across the board, it's very readable, it's a simple language, it has very few footguns, and it compiles fast. But it has better type safety than Go.

This isn't an exhaustive proof as no language will every be fully Pareto optimal in practice (it's just not possible, there are too many dimensions), but I'd argue it's at least somewhat close.

Re: Go is an ideal language for AI-assisted software engineering

#157

Post by radicalriddler »

skybrian wrote: post #21

Can't really argue with that, but In my experience, coding agents work quite well with TypeScript too. :)

The issue I always had with Typescript, was that LLM's like to find the easiest way to get a job done on a micro level (they seem to like to find the hardest design patterns to implement on the macro level tho, but language agnostic). What this means for Typescript, is unless you place guardrails everywhere, they'll cast their way out of a compiler problem with as any, or as unknown and then casting later. You either end up with readability issues, or runtime issues leaking out.

Might be a skill issue, but I got frustrated with it on new projects constantly.

Re: Go is an ideal language for AI-assisted software engineering

#158

Post by nperez19 »

amazingamazing wrote: post #97
yosefk wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber reported that their Go code has quantitatively more concurrency bugs than code in other languages, and while to me it seems obvious from looking at Go's concurrency model, this is backed by actual data. Is there any quantitative data to back the claim that Go is better in an LLM based workflow than another popular language?

Link to the uber report? Could not find it (unless it is this: https://www.uber.com/us/en/blog/data-race-patterns-in-go/ )

This is the actual link to the academic paper (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2204.00764)

Re: Go is an ideal language for AI-assisted software engineering

#159

Post by Thaxll »

yosefk wrote: post #51
jeanbza wrote: post #27

Definitely agree with this article. At Netflix, I lead the Go language guild. We've been seen increasing reports of users finding their AI agents writing better Go code than other languages, and increasing reports of projects favouring Go over other languages. Two additional notes I'll add: - Go has _great_ resources on writing good Go code, including treasure troves at https://go.dev/doc/effective_go and https://goo…

Uber reported that their Go code has quantitatively more concurrency bugs than code in other languages, and while to me it seems obvious from looking at Go's concurrency model, this is backed by actual data. Is there any quantitative data to back the claim that Go is better in an LLM based workflow than another popular language?

They never said that.

Re: Go is an ideal language for AI-assisted software engineering

#160

Post by overfeed »

zero_shift wrote: post #106
jdc0589 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For a language team, Go is a dream. I agree very strongly. There's no debate about things that have 1000000 permutations in other languages. e.g. The correct format can always be checked by `go fmt` with no real config options. the end.

I mean this isn't true, formatting is the most trivial part. And so many languages have an opinionated formatter these days (e.g. Black)

>> ...there is no debate...

> ...And so many languages have an opinionated formatter these days

The crux of gp's post is for Go, there is no debate as 'go fmt' is the only one that matters. Black is great, but some people prefer Ruff, leading to ...debates about which formatter the team/org should use. Go's batteries-included philosophy makes those discussions moot on so many levels beyond formatting.

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