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Re: Moving from PHP to Go and Back Again

blog.breakthru.solutions

261–270 of 281 posts

Re: Re: Moving from PHP to Go and Back Again

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rob never said Go wasn’t a systems programming language. He said the pedantic rules lawyering that plagued the internet after the initial claim was made — the tedious pablum that you’re continuing to propagate — was all noise and no signal, and made the claim not worth claiming anymore. For fuck’s sake, give it a rest.

>Rob never said Go wasn’t a systems programming language. Yes he did. He said it's a cloud-infrastructure language[0] and that he regrets calling it a systems language. That's why he took systems language off the Golang site. >For fuck’s sake, give it a rest. Why would we when we're right? Why don't you give it a rest, you've long been proven wrong. You know, usage of the English language and the terms within matters…

[deleted]

Re: Re: Moving from PHP to Go and Back Again

#262
post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A TCP/IP stack isn't a stringent litmus test for a systems PL. So you can loosen your own standard for what comprises a systems PL, but Go fails more rigorous standards. Everytime. Even Rob Pike says you're wrong and he's certainly a sympathetic character towards Go. All of this was hashed out years ago upon Go's release, and the Go team took down the "systems language" moniker. That was the end of it. Google knows i…

Unlike yourself I don't care what Rob says, because at the end of the day what matters is what people on the street are using Go for. Developers don't have to ask him permission or blessing for whatever they are trying to do with Go. Google is using Go in system components in Fucshia, and the new GPU debugger for Android is also written in Go. You are in the one in the dark about using GC enabled systems programming…

The reason Rob's statements matter is because he's the authority on Go. If you had been a primary inventor of a new language, I'm guaranteeing you'd feel entitled to decide what it is and is not. Not have "pjmlp" debate endlessly over something you had already stated was simply not true.

A lot of things work, doesn't mean they meet strict litmus tests (which matter, because definitions matter), nor does it mean it's a good idea.

Re: Re: Moving from PHP to Go and Back Again

#263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck hiring actual software engineers and not the ones who just managed to get into IT during the SEO boom. They are probably less expensive than the Py ones, but they probably don't have much of a future either.

Still parroting that old trope, huh? The quality of an engineer is rarely dictated by their tools. You can be an excellent engineer with a shitty language, or you can be a terrible engineer with a great language. I'll be the first to admit that PHP certainly has it's share of really bad developers, but what language doesn't?

It is an old trope - I completely understand your point, but the fact is: wherever you're professionally going, PHP is not the language you'd like to use anyway. So why use it?

I could see how doing FORTRAN for a banking institution is a good way to make money; but PHP doesn't even have that.

Most of my closer friends with a Computer Science degree would probably try to stay away from PHP: neither does it pay better than other languages, and most of the companies that have chosen to work with PHP don't seem to be that appealing either.

Is that an old trope? Well, I am parroting the industry: I had worked with PHP and I had realised that none of the cool people with money would do PHP anymore. It literally is similar to not using git in 2017 - if you're still doing PHP, then you're probably a dying business or a really bad software house.

Re: Re: Moving from PHP to Go and Back Again

#264
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always been really skeptical of those language performance comparisons which refer to PHP. As stated above PHP7 has similar performance when compared to HHVM which was made by Facebook. Additionally PHP has an amazing performance debugger by FB called xhprof. PHP performance could always be increased hugely by making sure is cache buckets have enough memory (opcode cache, realpath_cache_size). Secondly with any…

Being skeptical is a good attitude. I'm very skeptical of this Eldorado that some posters see in PHP7. My experience is quite different. > Additionally PHP has an amazing performance debugger by FB called xhprof. xhprof is unmaintained for years. The official version does not compile with PHP7. Various forks exist, but the only stable fork has been rebranded and defaults to sending all the performance data to the bra…

Tideways (xhprof fork) maintainer here.

We are working on separating the extension that powers our SaaS APM for PHP and the original xhprof callgraph profiler again into two extensions in the near future :-) Then the extension will still be branded, but it has no code related to sending data to our service and just the backwards compatible profiling API.

Re: Re: Moving from PHP to Go and Back Again

#265
post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike yourself I don't care what Rob says, because at the end of the day what matters is what people on the street are using Go for. Developers don't have to ask him permission or blessing for whatever they are trying to do with Go. Google is using Go in system components in Fucshia, and the new GPU debugger for Android is also written in Go. You are in the one in the dark about using GC enabled systems programming…

The reason Rob's statements matter is because he's the authority on Go. If you had been a primary inventor of a new language, I'm guaranteeing you'd feel entitled to decide what it is and is not. Not have "pjmlp" debate endlessly over something you had already stated was simply not true. A lot of things work, doesn't mean they meet strict litmus tests (which matter, because definitions matter), nor does it mean it's…

When a language is set loose to the world it belongs to its users, and whatever they decide to do with it.

Anyone is free to just fork Go and do whatever they feel like with it, regardless of what Rob thinks. That is the beauty of MIT license.

So given that Oberon is accepted as a systems programming language in computer science, with multiple published papers and books across two decades, heavily used in OS research at a couple of European universities during the 90's and an influence to Go, with hardware and compilers still being sold for systems programming, although in small scale.

What are the actual technical features Go is lacking that makes it impossible to be used for systems programming, given Oberon's influence on its design?

Re: Re: Moving from PHP to Go and Back Again

#266
post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One could equally remember that Java was a niche language in 2000 used by a few dot-com startups, and even today it has not replaced C++, COBOL, or Fortran. Ouch, the lack of historical accuracy of your comment is painful. Just a few points : - Sun Microsystem was founded in 1982, it's far from being a dot-com start-up. - Java was already ubiquitous by 2000, it was embedded in your phones, your credit cards, in you…

Well the size of industry was much smaller than it is today. Java kind of replaced or used in first place where people would have used C/C++ etc. Same is true for Go as lot of container/devops, cloud etc infrastructure is written in Go which would most likely be in Java. Among the languages that came in last 10 years Go is most popular with exception of maybe Swift. So compare to marketing juggernaut Java with billio…

> Among the languages that came in last 10 years Go is most popular with exception of maybe Swift.

Go is indeed one of the most popular of the last 10 years, but I don't think it's the most popular one. Swift is way ahead (because of the iOS walled garden), and Typescript is probably more popular than Go (or at least in the same ballpark).

> But among non corporate driven language Go is definitely on top.

Go, «non corporate driven», really ? OK it's not «corporate-driven» like Java, but I don't think anyone would be using Go if Google wasn't behind it. I really think the impact of marketing in Go's success is bigger than its value-proposition (I'm not saying that Go doesn't have a value-proposition, I'm just arguing that marketing played a really big role in its adoption). Consider for instance the microscopic mindshare that Pony[1] has, despite being «Go from the 21th century» with a sound type system and a data-race-free concurrency model.

[1] https://www.ponylang.org/

Re: Re: Moving from PHP to Go and Back Again

#267
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why should Go enforce it on behalf of everybody? A parser option to not automatically insert semicolons would be all I need, but no. To me, even with super short lines, braces at the end of the line are messy, and consistently messy is still messy. > Either you inforce a clear style guide which leaves you to explain the team why your style is the best, or you leave this task to the language itself Which then leav…

Official response: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAAkCSZUG1c&t=8m43s

Yeah, that's what I thought.

Re: Re: Moving from PHP to Go and Back Again

#268
post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the size of industry was much smaller than it is today. Java kind of replaced or used in first place where people would have used C/C++ etc. Same is true for Go as lot of container/devops, cloud etc infrastructure is written in Go which would most likely be in Java. Among the languages that came in last 10 years Go is most popular with exception of maybe Swift. So compare to marketing juggernaut Java with billio…

> Among the languages that came in last 10 years Go is most popular with exception of maybe Swift. Go is indeed one of the most popular of the last 10 years, but I don't think it's the most popular one. Swift is way ahead (because of the iOS walled garden), and Typescript is probably more popular than Go (or at least in the same ballpark). > But among non corporate driven language Go is definitely on top. Go, «non co…

Marketing aside, people evaluate languages for their community. The lack of a community is something that can be fixed by marketing, but marketing isn't necessary to create it.

Pony is also pre-1.0, and it doesn't look much like Go to me.

Re: Re: Moving from PHP to Go and Back Again

#269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One could equally remember that Java was a niche language in 2000 used by a few dot-com startups, and even today it has not replaced C++, COBOL, or Fortran. Languages don’t get replaced, people just don’t use them as often for new projects.

> One could equally remember that Java was a niche language in 2000 used by a few dot-com startups, and even today it has not replaced C++, COBOL, or Fortran. Ouch, the lack of historical accuracy of your comment is painful. Just a few points : - Sun Microsystem was founded in 1982, it's far from being a dot-com start-up. - Java was already ubiquitous by 2000, it was embedded in your phones, your credit cards, in you…

Ouch, I should have explained that I was being sarcastic. Javagator was canceled in July 1998, so by 2000 it was thoroughly dead. Sun using Java no more makes it a major language than Google using Go does.

What I remember from the time was that C and C++ was everywhere, and Java was this weird new thing with a bunch of promises that ran slowly (because the JIT wasn't standard until later). There were a lot of people who were dismissive of Java, which was stupid, and there are a lot of people today who are dismissive of Go, which doesn't make sense to me either.

Re: Re: Moving from PHP to Go and Back Again

#270
post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason Rob's statements matter is because he's the authority on Go. If you had been a primary inventor of a new language, I'm guaranteeing you'd feel entitled to decide what it is and is not. Not have "pjmlp" debate endlessly over something you had already stated was simply not true. A lot of things work, doesn't mean they meet strict litmus tests (which matter, because definitions matter), nor does it mean it's…

When a language is set loose to the world it belongs to its users, and whatever they decide to do with it. Anyone is free to just fork Go and do whatever they feel like with it, regardless of what Rob thinks. That is the beauty of MIT license. So given that Oberon is accepted as a systems programming language in computer science, with multiple published papers and books across two decades, heavily used in OS research…

Your concerns have already been answered. Most succinctly stated by two points.

1) A lot of things work, it doesn't make them good ideas.

2) Go doesn't meet the strictest litmus tests of a systems language, never did, never will. It's only a systems PL only if you relax your definition of what it is. Go's own creator says it's not and if any one person is the authority on this topic it's him. There are platforms that meet all definitions, those are definitely systems PLs.

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