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Ten years of “Go: The good, the bad, and the meh”

blog.carlmjohnson.net

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Re: Ten years of “Go: The good, the bad, and the meh”

#181

Post by pjmlp »

softirq wrote: post #57
wk_end wrote: post #46

> Again, it shows how things have changed that I praised Go’s type inference as an advance in the state of the art, but now the Hacker News crowd considers Go’s type inference to be very limited compared to other languages. "You either die a language nobody uses or live long enough to be one people complain about." This rubs me the wrong way. Even back when Go first came out, anyone who knew anything about programmin…

> anyone who knew anything about programming languages rolled their eyes at pretty much everything about Go's type system And Go has succeeded despite these condescending diatribes on how a language needs to have a Hindley-Milner type system with ADTs and type classes to be useful. Go made me truly realize how insufferable the PLT community is, and why they are so absolutely lost when it comes to creating successful…

As proven by Oberon-2 and Limbo ancestors, it helps to have a good godfather.

Re: Ten years of “Go: The good, the bad, and the meh”

#182

Post by valenterry »

btilly wrote: post #166
valenterry wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C is also a very low-level and close to the machine language. Just because you can build a microchip doesn't mean you can build a spaceship and vice versa. So I'm not surprised about that they e.g. left out generics and said they did so because they didn't know a good or right way to add them to the language. They were honest at least which I value a lot. As to the success of Go that you mention. Well, let's be hones…

Well, let's be honest: it targets junior developers, or at least that was originally a major goal. It is backed by Google and is marketed. It actually targeted Google developers. It was a 20% project that was not backed by the company officially. Official backing only came *AFTER* others were convinced internally that it was worthy. Their marketing budget started at a grand total of $0. So it stated with NONE of the…

A programming language "starting" is usually a longer period of time, at least by my definition. Not the first year or so.

Also, that go targeted junior developers were the authors words, not mine.

Last:

> Can you provide a reason why we should care about a language being "an advanced high-level language"?

Because it makes a certain group of developers more productive. If you care about that or not is your decision. I'm not saying you should.

Re: Ten years of “Go: The good, the bad, and the meh”

#183

Post by alcover »

stevemk14ebr wrote: post #106

"What I got right...Using capitalization for the public/private distinction in functions, methods, variables, and fields" I disagree with this strongly. Due to this when you need to change one of these things to the opposite it involves changing every use site as well. This has far reaching implications for refactoring, wrapping external code when you really do need to expose its guts, etc. Any time you need to do th…

Agreed. First thing I frowned at when considering Go. (Plus it looks a bit messy. foo.Init() ?).

That and reserving the verb `make`..

Re: Ten years of “Go: The good, the bad, and the meh”

#184

Post by valenterry »

Veraticus wrote: post #154
valenterry wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C is also a very low-level and close to the machine language. Just because you can build a microchip doesn't mean you can build a spaceship and vice versa. So I'm not surprised about that they e.g. left out generics and said they did so because they didn't know a good or right way to add them to the language. They were honest at least which I value a lot. As to the success of Go that you mention. Well, let's be hones…

Not advanced or high-level enough for Kubernetes, eh? Most senior programmers I know love Golang. It is easy to teach, easy to read, easy to understand, and easy to be productive in. And it is difficult to make unclear, complicated, or extremely bad code. A trade-off is that it is more verbose than other languages (if err != nil is a meme for a reason), but I think most people wind up prefer the clarity and correctne…

> Not advanced or high-level enough for Kubernetes, eh?

Let me ask you with two counter questions.

1.: which one do you think is more complex: kubernetes or the linux kernel?

2.: which lange do you think is more "advanced" or "high-level" enough by our definition: C or Go?

I think you can see where I'm going at.

Otherwise, I don't disagree with the rest. Go is the new cool python.

Re: Ten years of “Go: The good, the bad, and the meh”

#185

Post by pjmlp »

sethammons wrote: post #157
LinXitoW wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go has succeeded because it's not horrible and supported and used by one of the biggest companies out there. That means you end up with a long list of decent libraries, which to me feels like the main factor of success for a language.

Why has Dart not taken off?

Because politics, Google wanted to do an hostile takeover JavaScript, it backfired, Chrome dropped DartiumVM, and they only got rescued thanks AdWords.

Key language designers left after this.

However it seems to have enough management support, that since it found an home in Flutter, I would assert there are having more adoption than Xamarin, React Native or Cordova.

Re: Ten years of “Go: The good, the bad, and the meh”

#186

Post by curryhoward »

softirq wrote: post #57
wk_end wrote: post #46

> Again, it shows how things have changed that I praised Go’s type inference as an advance in the state of the art, but now the Hacker News crowd considers Go’s type inference to be very limited compared to other languages. "You either die a language nobody uses or live long enough to be one people complain about." This rubs me the wrong way. Even back when Go first came out, anyone who knew anything about programmin…

> anyone who knew anything about programming languages rolled their eyes at pretty much everything about Go's type system And Go has succeeded despite these condescending diatribes on how a language needs to have a Hindley-Milner type system with ADTs and type classes to be useful. Go made me truly realize how insufferable the PLT community is, and why they are so absolutely lost when it comes to creating successful…

> and why they are so absolutely lost when it comes to creating successful languages

They aren't lost—they're just more interested in actually good ideas than in popularity. Popular languages must appeal to all kinds of programmers with varying backgrounds, so they are heavily constrained. Your argument is basically that mathematicians don't know what they're doing because their most advanced theories aren't used by mechanical engineers.

Re: Ten years of “Go: The good, the bad, and the meh”

#187

Post by pjmlp »

philosopher1234 wrote: post #116
tsss wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go has "swept up entire markets" because they have an unlimited marketing budget. It has nothing to do with the merits of the language itself.

Can you point to something Go has spent this hypothetical marketing budget on?

Docker, Kubernetes and key CNCF projects.

Re: Ten years of “Go: The good, the bad, and the meh”

#188

Post by Gibbon1 »

Veraticus wrote: post #154
valenterry wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C is also a very low-level and close to the machine language. Just because you can build a microchip doesn't mean you can build a spaceship and vice versa. So I'm not surprised about that they e.g. left out generics and said they did so because they didn't know a good or right way to add them to the language. They were honest at least which I value a lot. As to the success of Go that you mention. Well, let's be hones…

Not advanced or high-level enough for Kubernetes, eh? Most senior programmers I know love Golang. It is easy to teach, easy to read, easy to understand, and easy to be productive in. And it is difficult to make unclear, complicated, or extremely bad code. A trade-off is that it is more verbose than other languages (if err != nil is a meme for a reason), but I think most people wind up prefer the clarity and correctne…

Reframing a bit based on my own friends. The senior people I know like it because it's really easy to manage subordinates who are using it. And based on a few experiences I've had doesn't lend itself to the programmers wasting time on half baked mystery abstractions and broken internal API's.

Re: Ten years of “Go: The good, the bad, and the meh”

#189

Post by monksy »

omegabravo wrote: post #120
monksy wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you can learn in a day and keep in your head. I'm not sure that this successpoint is really that valuable. It sounds more valuable for those who want butts in seats than it does for long term satisfaction and survivability of your code base.

Being able to read your code you wrote 2 years ago does wonders for survivability, which is a gross simplification of course. It's a great language for some problems, horrible for others. The problem is people tend to talk as though everyone works in their domain.

> Being able to read your code you wrote 2 years ago

It won't stop you from asking wtf did someone write this and then doing a git blame and seeing your name.

Re: Ten years of “Go: The good, the bad, and the meh”

#190

Post by Mawr »

soulbadguy wrote: post #174
softirq wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> anyone who knew anything about programming languages rolled their eyes at pretty much everything about Go's type system And Go has succeeded despite these condescending diatribes on how a language needs to have a Hindley-Milner type system with ADTs and type classes to be useful. Go made me truly realize how insufferable the PLT community is, and why they are so absolutely lost when it comes to creating successful…

> And Go has succeeded despite these condescending diatribes on how a language needs to have a Hindley-Milner type system with ADTs and type classes to be useful. And nothing says that go wouldn't have been more successful had they added those features. In the final analysis, the relationship between the success of a language and any intrinsic qualities is very hard to qualify. But IMO, the success is not a good meas…

> In the final analysis, the relationship between the success of a language and any intrinsic qualities is very hard to qualify.

Not at all. It's the same as with literally any other product. If it's good, people will use it. Outliers are rare.

Now, you may disagree with what most people consider good, but that's another discussion ;)

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