Go is Google's language, not ours • Hacker News Board

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#361

Post by cesarb » Wed, May 22, 2019, 1:05 PM UTC

munmaek wrote: post #337

Illniyar wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Swift has garnered little traction outside iOS development, while other languages are gaining traction inside iOS development (javascript mostly, but Kotlin is also trying to make headway into iOS development). I won't put survival rating for it to be very big. I'm sure Apple would keep it for decades to come, but I'm wouldn't bet on it being anywhere near as popular as it is now in the future.

As long those languages aren't native, they won't be nearly as popular as swift. Swift doesn't need to be adopted outside of iOS development at all, because when people develop iOS apps the main choice will be Swift. Swift is actually a very pleasant language, and apple provides some pretty good documentation although it could be better. It's going to play out like this: Swift or Objective-C (for legacy codebases/peo…

> Swift doesn't need to be adopted outside of iOS development at all, because when people develop iOS apps the main choice will be Swift.

That would mean its fate would be tied to iOS, which is used only on phones built by a single company. When that company stopped producing mobile phones, or decided to use a different operating system, the language would die.

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#362

Post by lllr_finger » Wed, May 22, 2019, 1:06 PM UTC

uranusjr wrote: post #108

ehsankia wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a similar question, but rather, what's the difference between Go with Google deciding what goes in, and Python (a year ago) where the BDFL and a couple core devs decide what go in? Sure you could argue that a company may have different incentives than a BDFL, but in this context, it's not clear that Go would've been more likely to accept the change you're proposing if they weren't being led by Google.

I guess the most important distinction is the “B” part (benevolent). Guido is called that because he is known (since before BDFL is a thing) to listen to other people, and adapt when they disagree strongly with his decisions. Google has never demonstrated the same attitude afaict, and in multiple occasions showed exactly the opposite. Edit: And to answer the question, no, there’s no philosophical differences. And the…

There are some who would argue it's a "soft B" - his recent conf outburst isn't the only example of him failing to listen and adapt.

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#363

Post by craftoman » Wed, May 22, 2019, 1:07 PM UTC

I think Microsoft or Apple for example, made their own programming languages in much more ethical way than Google's sceptical which is: "ohh we are going to make our own language and get the help from the open source community." Everyone knows that companies are "exploiting" open source today which is really sad.

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#364

Post by josefx » Wed, May 22, 2019, 1:09 PM UTC

szuze wrote: post #153

pa7ch wrote: post #17

Many like Go because it is an opinionated language. I'm not sure that a 'community' run language will create something like that because there are too many opinions. Many claim to represent the community, but not the community that doesn't share their opinion. Without clear leaders I fear technical direction and taste will be about politics which seems more uncertain/risky. I like that there is a tight cohesive group…

If you give Go to the community, the community will add exceptions... yuck.

Go already has panic/recover which where explicitly proposed as an exception like mechanism for go.

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#365

Post by reilly3000 » Wed, May 22, 2019, 1:10 PM UTC

playing_colours wrote: post #259

cfcf14 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree. When I first started writing Go (coming from Python/C#) I complained an awful lot about what felt like pointless hamstringing of functionality. Go is a simple language, and you don't get many toys. It also feels very verbose at times, and forces you to think a lot about doing things which seem automatic in other languages. However, as time went on, I noticed a few trends. Firstly, forcing me to th…

Interesting, that I saw a similar pattern like "at first I complained, but as time went on I found some benefits" quite a lot. It can be that your learn a language better, became more comfortable with the way it must be used: say, stopped writing code in Elixir the way your used to write in Python. But the other thing is that it's in our human nature that we tend to look for something positive in bad situations we ex…

+1 for 'fractal of shit' - that is a keeper.

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#366

Post by nudq » Wed, May 22, 2019, 1:11 PM UTC

dis-sys wrote: post #5

Seeing Huawei got recently blacklisted for all US made chips, parts and some Android services from Google, an interesting question to ask is whether the US government will one day force some foreign companies (e.g. Huawei, ZTE and DJI for example) to stop using programming languages invented & implemented by US companies.

What a strange conclusion. Not likely, but much more likely than that, is that they'll force foreign companies to use Go and other products controlled by US corporations.

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#367

Post by dmitryminkovsky » Wed, May 22, 2019, 1:12 PM UTC

craftoman wrote: post #363

I think Microsoft or Apple for example, made their own programming languages in much more ethical way than Google's sceptical which is: "ohh we are going to make our own language and get the help from the open source community." Everyone knows that companies are "exploiting" open source today which is really sad.

> Everyone knows that companies are "exploiting" open source today which is really sad.

Often enough it seems like companies go out of their way to deal with open source just for the "cred" and hiring opportunities that it brings. The open source itself is a just a drag on their internal team, which has to deal with tickets and contributions they don't want or need.

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#368

Post by munmaek » Wed, May 22, 2019, 1:13 PM UTC

cesarb wrote: post #361

munmaek wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long those languages aren't native, they won't be nearly as popular as swift. Swift doesn't need to be adopted outside of iOS development at all, because when people develop iOS apps the main choice will be Swift. Swift is actually a very pleasant language, and apple provides some pretty good documentation although it could be better. It's going to play out like this: Swift or Objective-C (for legacy codebases/peo…

> Swift doesn't need to be adopted outside of iOS development at all, because when people develop iOS apps the main choice will be Swift. That would mean its fate would be tied to iOS, which is used only on phones built by a single company. When that company stopped producing mobile phones, or decided to use a different operating system, the language would die.

Correct, which would lead us to ask a pertinent question: Is this likely to happen in the next 10 years?

I would be inclined to say no, it's rather unlikely, short of apple somehow suddenly going bankrupt.

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#369

Post by foldr » Wed, May 22, 2019, 1:17 PM UTC

jolfdb wrote: post #328

foldr wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sort of agree with that, but features often have externalities. For example, let's say I choose to use lambda case because it makes some of my code a little bit more concise. From my narrow point of view, that seems like a win. But then it's one more piece of syntax that external tools have to deal with, one more barrier to anyone trying to develop an alternative to GHC, one little piece of additional complexity to…

Do you need an alternative to GHC?

I would certainly like a compiler that was fast enough to be usable with realistically-sized codebases. I'm writing this while waiting a couple of minutes for ~10,000 lines of Haskell to compile.

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#370

Post by Yaa101 » Wed, May 22, 2019, 1:20 PM UTC

There are 2 things I like about Go,

1. Compared to most compiled languages the toolchain is very easy. 2. Reduced ways of solving things in the language itself.

My main dislike of C and C++ is that there are numerous ways of solutions for the same problems, this forces me to weigh the solutions constantly against things like "Is this a safe way, does it create fast code, will this way fit when my project is further or must I constantly refactor my code". The extreme flexibilty of C and C++ are more a burden for me than an asset.