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Go is Google's language, not ours

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Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#221

Post by pjmlp »

fetbaffe wrote: post #178
pjmlp wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Visual Basic lives on as VB.NET and to this day VB 6 runtime keeps being updated to run on the latest versions of Windows.

VB is de facto dead, declared legacy in 2008 & latest major release was in 1998. VB.NET is a new incompatible language, everyone invested in VB needed to retrain skills & rewrite existing software. It was a huge uproar in the community, but MS didn't care enough & this goes against TS idea that the community can stop a major company doing this sort of thing. It can happen & it will happen again. However that does not…

Yet on a past life I managed to migrate code without any major issues, other than components that weren't available on .NET.

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#222

Post by pjmlp »

Crinus wrote: post #182
pjmlp wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Visual Basic lives on as VB.NET and to this day VB 6 runtime keeps being updated to run on the latest versions of Windows.

Visual Basic and VB.NET are two very different beasts, only sharing a name. The VB6 runtime is indeed updated to run, but really how much update does it need beyond sticking the DLLs around? The VB4 and VB5 runtimes run perfectly fine on Win10 and those had no updates for it. It all relies on Win10's overall backwards compatibility.

They are still pretty similar, Microsoft re-introduced quite a few features back.

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#223

Post by zulgan »

I believe that solid (benevolent) dictatorship is better(faster, can make unpopular decisions, etc) than democracy.

I don't like any language, but tbh I hate go the least, and I believe this is because few very very dedicated people with enormous amount of experience can simply make unpopular decisions.

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#224

Post by pjmlp »

tremon wrote: post #192
pjmlp wrote: post #149

I pity the recent CS graduates that weren't able to attend a decent CS degree and need Go to fit their mental model.

That's not really a problem for computer science students, I think. Their area of focus tends to be on the algebraic, theoretical side of the spectrum. It's much more of a problem for computer (software) engineers.

Which boils down to the same issue.

Back home CS means Informatics Engineering, a degree certified by the Engineering Order to practice, with enough theory and practice spread across 3 - 5 years.

Those that want CS theory without programing have a major in Mathematics with a minor degree in computing.

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#225

Post by foldr »

masklinn wrote: post #122
nnq wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Parametric polymorphism is a real world issue. ...what in the world makes you thing that? I love parametric polymorphism, but nothing stops you from writing the most complex computer programs you can imagine without it.

> ...what in the world makes you thing that? Go literally special-cases generic builtins because they couldn't be arsed to properly implement it but knew nobody would accept completely untyped core collections.

Go does not have generic arrays any more than C does. You cannot e.g. write a generic Go function to reverse an array.

You seem to be conflating type-parameterized collections with generics. You can use generics to implement type-parameterized collections, but it doesn't really make sense to think of type-parameterized collections as a form of generics unless you can actually abstract over the type parameters (which you can't in Go).

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#226

Post by coldtea »

th3iedkid wrote: post #189
akerro wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>everyone's pet feature Isn't that C#? Java is very slow at adding new features, Java has only things that were proved to work in other languages.

Generics was introduced in Java in 2004 with J2SE 5.0[0]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_version_history#J2SE_5.0

Generics should have been in Java (and Go) from the beginning.

Those surely are not the proof that Java adds "everybody's favorite feature". I think the parent means the newest Oracle projects (Valhalla, modules, value types, streams, and so on).

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#227

Post by jsty »

sverhagen wrote: post #196
pjmlp wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Distributed transactions across cluster nodes - The IDE experience with PL/SQL, including graphical debugging of stored procedures - Compiling PL/SQL to native code for better performance - Running bare metal without an underlying OS - Oracle RAC - The fine tuning options on their JDBC and .NET drivers - A proper C++ driver API

I don't have the stats to back this up, bit that all seems very niche. I have to imagine you get downvoted because people don't recognize these as real requirements. I needed not a single one of these. Ever.

Compiling SQL -> native I'm not sure deserves to be described as niche, since lots of analytical queries can benefit from that. Worth pointing out that Postgres has a JIT compiler [0].

[0] https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/jit.html

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#228

Post by repolfx »

tremon wrote: post #192
pjmlp wrote: post #149

I pity the recent CS graduates that weren't able to attend a decent CS degree and need Go to fit their mental model.

That's not really a problem for computer science students, I think. Their area of focus tends to be on the algebraic, theoretical side of the spectrum. It's much more of a problem for computer (software) engineers.

Be careful. Rob Pike asserted Googlers can't handle an "advanced language" or whatever his exact words were, but he provided no evidence this was true, or that others at Google agreed with him, or that this was even the reason Go was created to begin with.

The most obvious evidence he's wrong is that Google's codebase is all C++ and Java, both languages that have generics and other more advanced features than Go. So apparently Googlers can use such languages just fine. What Pike was claiming was that Google had at some point dropped their hiring bar dramatically and somehow nobody had noticed this or commented on it, despite how controversial it'd have been inside the company.

I rather think that this comment about Go is not reflective of any real strategy or decision inside Google. Go's creators were bored and wanted to make a new language, so they did. The justification for what it looks like was then retrofitted on top.

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#229

Post by peteri »

fetbaffe wrote: post #100
rococode wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd use this as an argument that if PHP is the gold standard for a community-driven programming language, I'd rather every popular language be backed by a large corp haha. Actually, even ignoring PHP, I'm vaguely convinced it's generally better for a language to be backed by a company. I personally feel more secure knowing that there are people whose full-time job is to take care of the language, and I trust communit…

Visual Basic was basically(!) killed by Microsoft albeit large protest, so no, putting your trust in one company does not always work. PHP has been developed very well the past few years as community project, there is an open RFC process with a codified voting process in place. Sure there have been some drama within the community, but that has not affected either the language nor the implementation. What makes PHP a…

It still lives on fine, turn on the developer tab in Excel and there is VBA 7.1 (which is basically still VB6 with a different forms engine)

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#230

Post by stunt »

TylerE wrote: post #92
willtim wrote: post #75

Haskell is an excellent example of a community-driven language. It's more mature and advanced than most commercial offerings too, offering a superior type system, fast and efficient executables, lightweight fiber concurrency, software transactional memory, higher-kinded parametric polymorphism and many more features.

Haven’t most of the top Haskell devs been on the Microsoft payroll for years and years?

Majority of open source contributors have a day job.
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