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Ian Lance Taylor's Response to “Go Is Google's Language”

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Re: Ian Lance Taylor's Response to “Go Is Google's Language”

#241

Post by joemi »

objektif wrote: post #197
joemi wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it matters. That's the whole reason the Go Is Google's Language post exists. And the whole reason the response exists, and this very comment thread, too.

Absolutely not. It is one thing to create a language and maontain it and another to hire someone who created a language some years ago.

from the post:

> There was no mandate or suggestion from Google management or executives that Google should develop a programming language. For many years, including well after the open source release, I doubt any Google executives had more than a vague awareness of the existence of Go

Re: Ian Lance Taylor's Response to “Go Is Google's Language”

#242

Post by geodel »

coldtea wrote: post #14

> The blog post starts by quoting @kapoorsunny asking why there can't be something like OpenGo, with a community implementation of generics. I hope that it is clear that the answer is that there could be. Nothing prevents that from happening. In particular, Google doesn't prevent that from happening. No, but like with the community developed dependency solution, Google can arbitrarily chose not to include it in Go, e…

> No, but like with the community developed dependency solution,

Unless you are deliberately trying to obscure the facts. Sam Boyer et al are no unanimously elected community leaders whose solutions somehow must be included with main distribution.

> So it's more like saying "you can have your own niche ports, just don't expect them to become part of the main language".

This is exactly same for all open source languages, if core maintainers do not like the your change either fork it and implement or use any other language which gives you feature you wanted.

Re: Ian Lance Taylor's Response to “Go Is Google's Language”

#243

Post by rlonn »

c3534l wrote: post #58

Everyone's upset that Go is Google's language, but no one would have adopted it if it weren't. It's not enough to have a cool idea for a language, even if your cool idea is not to put any new cool ideas in the language. You have to be Mozilla, or Google, or someone it seems in order to convince people this language is for real and will be supported for many years to come, and will have a healthy ecosystem. If I had m…

Pleasing all pleases noone. Successful products and projects come from a vision that is executed with discipline. Design by committee never works if the committee reaches a certain size. Instead of whining and trying to sabotage Go, why don't you fork it and apply your misguided product management ideas to the soon-to-be-forgotten fork instead? Applause to the Go core team, inside Google or outside it, for creating a great language. Please keep it up!

Re: Ian Lance Taylor's Response to “Go Is Google's Language”

#244

Post by zzzcpan »

c3534l wrote: post #58

Everyone's upset that Go is Google's language, but no one would have adopted it if it weren't. It's not enough to have a cool idea for a language, even if your cool idea is not to put any new cool ideas in the language. You have to be Mozilla, or Google, or someone it seems in order to convince people this language is for real and will be supported for many years to come, and will have a healthy ecosystem. If I had m…

> Everyone's upset that Go is Google's language, but no one would have adopted it if it weren't.

Brand recognition is not that important for programming languages. It does skew decisions a bit, but people still have to make too many of them when moving to another programming language, so the effect is not that significant. Go just happened to hit all the right spots for many programmers at the time and a bit of marketing turned that into some adoption.

Re: Ian Lance Taylor's Response to “Go Is Google's Language”

#245

Post by KirinDave »

eikenberry wrote: post #217
tomohawk wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many of us in the Go community who like Go the way it is. The last thing we want is another Java ecosystem, which feels like something designed by archonaut committee more than anything coherent. Better to not have generics than to have generics that are bodged into the language like they were in Java.

This is my biggest worry about the future of Go, that it will gain enough adoption at enterprise shops that we'll end up with another Java-esque ecosystem. So far it has seemed to have avoided that trap, but it is still a young language.

I am ... Quite surprised to see folks arguing that Java has "too many" features. For a log time the problem was we couldn't get ANY new language features through committee and so we were resorting to outrageous hacks.

Re: Ian Lance Taylor's Response to “Go Is Google's Language”

#246

Post by geodel »

eecc wrote: post #233

I’m a bit upset by the assumption that a Democracy (in this case in software) would lead to chaos, therefore leadership should be limited to a closed elite. So what about the scientific method? What about custodian oversight?

No need to be upset. Maybe you can set an example for Go project on how it is done in right way.

Re: Ian Lance Taylor's Response to “Go Is Google's Language”

#247

Post by RhodesianHunter »

eikenberry wrote: post #217
tomohawk wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many of us in the Go community who like Go the way it is. The last thing we want is another Java ecosystem, which feels like something designed by archonaut committee more than anything coherent. Better to not have generics than to have generics that are bodged into the language like they were in Java.

This is my biggest worry about the future of Go, that it will gain enough adoption at enterprise shops that we'll end up with another Java-esque ecosystem. So far it has seemed to have avoided that trap, but it is still a young language.

The only people in my experience that complain about the Java ecosystem have limited experience with Java 7 or before and haven't done any real modern Java development in many years.

Re: Ian Lance Taylor's Response to “Go Is Google's Language”

#248

Post by joemi »

zemo wrote: post #219
c3534l wrote: post #58

Everyone's upset that Go is Google's language, but no one would have adopted it if it weren't. It's not enough to have a cool idea for a language, even if your cool idea is not to put any new cool ideas in the language. You have to be Mozilla, or Google, or someone it seems in order to convince people this language is for real and will be supported for many years to come, and will have a healthy ecosystem. If I had m…

> Everyone's upset that Go is Google's language is that actually true or is that true of a vocal minority? I've been using Go since 2011 and I'm perfectly happy that it's Google's language; I'm happy to mooch off of their investments. In my seven-plus years of using Go I have never encountered a Go programmer in real life that is actually mad about this.

I think the "everyone" in that statement refers to those who are upset. It probably could have been more accurately phrased as "People are upset that Go is Google's language..."

As to your not encountering a Go programmer who's mad about this, I think that's because you're considering people who are already programming in Go. I suspect people who care never actually start using Go because of their thoughts on Google's involvement. (For the record, I too am fine with it, especially after reading Ian Lance Taylor's response.)

Re: Ian Lance Taylor's Response to “Go Is Google's Language”

#249

Post by gradys »

tsimionescu wrote: post #228
pizza234 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's also worth highlighting this: no successful language-indeed, no successful free software project of any sort is a democracy [...] Successful languages pay attention to what people want, but to change the language according to what most people want is, I believe, a recipe for chaos and incoherence. I believe that every successful language must have a coherent vision that is shared by a relatively small gr…

Isn't C++ committee-driven, which could be considered a type of democratic process? Or would that not be considered an open-source project? On that note, I also seem to remember that LLVM/Clang are pretty democratic, but I haven't dug deeply and may be completely wrong.

The analogy

   Go : C++ :: Go's governance : C++'s governance
works pretty well. Maybe C++ is a good example of this, and maybe that is a good way to build a language like C++, but it might be a bad way to make a language like Go.
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