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

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#41

Post by ncmncm » Wed, May 22, 2019, 6:51 AM UTC

cryptos wrote: post #24

Actually there are relatively few real (TM) open source projects driven by the community, at least if you look at important projects. Many open source projects are just commercial projects driven mainly by a single company. Look for example at Redis, MongoDB, MySQL, and Elasticsearch. They follow exactly the model described in the article. Technologies like these could have been developed by a community, too, but it…

Actually Mongo doesn't even look at pull requests. So, yes.

Postgres (do we really still need the "QL" reminder?) has demonstrated staying power, and repays invested time in spades. Linux, obvs. Rust, it's still too early to be sure about. Learning it will be at least educational, maybe formative, and at worst it won't be taken away.

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#42

Post by sjellis » Wed, May 22, 2019, 6:53 AM UTC

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #2

To determine how open a language really is look at how many widely used implementations of the compiler there are for the language. If there is only a single implementation of the compiler/interpreter than it is not really open but controlled by that core compiler team.

The TinyGo project are implementing a Go compiler on top of LLVM, to use Go on very small devices:

https://tinygo.org/

The Go language is defined by a spec with compatibility guarantees, but beyond embedded systems and WASM, there don't seem to be a lot of use cases for alternate implementations.

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#43

Post by theshrike79 » Wed, May 22, 2019, 6:53 AM UTC

Kovah wrote: post #34

I am about to learn a new programming language and I decided against Go just because of this fact. I do not trust Google and reading this article just makes clear how critical the state of the language is in terms of control by the community. Python looks most promising and I already worked with it, but I am not sure yet. Can anyone recommend a viable alternative for Go? Any web-focused language that is performant, m…

There really isn't any with a substantial community.

Python is good for algorithmic stuff and things that need specific libraries (tensorflow, NumPy etc)

But if you want a garbage collected language for moving bits from place to place over the network, it's kinda hard to beat Go.

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#44

Post by dtrailin » Wed, May 22, 2019, 6:53 AM UTC

ncmncm wrote: post #6

This. But Go is one in a long line of proprietary languages that those of us who have been around the block know to stay away from. Recently: Java was Sun's, C# is Microsoft's, Swift is Apple's, Go is Google's. With any luck, all will be footnotes in ten years. Those of us who knew better than to get invested in them will be fine. Everyone else gets a chance to learn something.

Each of the languages you mentioned is wildly popular, well run, and not going anywhere. If you chose not to learn Java a decade ago because you "knew better" you aren't any better off than you were before, given that this language is the core foundation many companies and open source projects, maintaining relevance for 20 years. Not learning Swift now means you won't be able to do effective IOS development. Not learning Go means you're missing out on the language that a lot of important systems software is built in such as Kubernetes and Docker and won't be able to contribute to them.

I think also it's inaccurate to call any of these languages proprietary. They are all open source and if you wish you can fork them and make your own. C# in particular is now run by the dotnet foundation which is nonprofit with elected board seats, putting it in a better place for governance than many community driven languages.

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#45

Post by smt88 » Wed, May 22, 2019, 6:53 AM UTC

ncmncm wrote: post #27

airstrike wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Java is a footnote?

Not yet. But we can hope. Ten years is a long time in this business.

Ten years is a very short time for a programming language. Python is decades old and hasn't hit its peak popularity yet. I don't know of a single mainstream language that has died, except for perhaps ColdFusion or ActionScript.

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#46

Post by ncmncm » Wed, May 22, 2019, 6:53 AM UTC

ipsum2 wrote: post #35

cryptos wrote: post #24

Actually there are relatively few real (TM) open source projects driven by the community, at least if you look at important projects. Many open source projects are just commercial projects driven mainly by a single company. Look for example at Redis, MongoDB, MySQL, and Elasticsearch. They follow exactly the model described in the article. Technologies like these could have been developed by a community, too, but it…

I'm curious what the distinction is between Rust (driven by Mozilla) and Go (driven by Google).

Rust has largely broken out of Mozilla already. If it can maintain its growth rate (not guaranteed, but so far so good) it will have a future. Check back in five years.

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#47

Post by the_mitsuhiko » Wed, May 22, 2019, 6:56 AM UTC

anoncake wrote: post #40

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is there no allowance? A lot of people in the community would love a rust compiler that can compile down to C for instance.

Maybe the tool chain is hardcoded to use the standard compiler? But that's more likely because of YAGNI, not because the rust community hates freedom.

The toolchain is built on top of rustup which very purpose is managing multiple compilers. If one were to build a different rustc it could be swapped in even in the world we have today.

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#48

Post by grumpydba » Wed, May 22, 2019, 6:56 AM UTC

dis-sys wrote: post #21

dhkxh wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how open source works.

The license can change any time they want. They can change the license to prevent certain companies from using future releases and/or security patches. Let's don't forget the fact that Huawei had legally binding contracts with all those US suppliers.

> The license can change any time they want. They can change the license to prevent certain companies from using future releases and/or security patches.

Until then, it's a bsd inspired license. And you get code from Cox, Griesmer, Taylor, Pike, Hudson and Clements under those terms. It's a big team on several aspects.

So you can remove your tinfoil hat and check the code for yourself. It is valuable.

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#49

Post by pushpop » Wed, May 22, 2019, 6:56 AM UTC

ncmncm wrote: post #6

This. But Go is one in a long line of proprietary languages that those of us who have been around the block know to stay away from. Recently: Java was Sun's, C# is Microsoft's, Swift is Apple's, Go is Google's. With any luck, all will be footnotes in ten years. Those of us who knew better than to get invested in them will be fine. Everyone else gets a chance to learn something.

I’m guessing you don’t use C or C++ either then because they were proprietary Bell Labs languages. You should probably rule out assembly too because they will have proprietary instructions for proprietary CPUs. Which means if you really want to be freed from the shackles of using proprietary tools when programming you’re now building your own hardware too, processors and all. Good job ASCII isn’t proprietary otherwise your computing device would have no compatibility with modern computers at all.

I know I get a little absurd towards the end but no more so than your remarks about Java.

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#50

Post by smt88 » Wed, May 22, 2019, 6:56 AM UTC

Kovah wrote: post #34

I am about to learn a new programming language and I decided against Go just because of this fact. I do not trust Google and reading this article just makes clear how critical the state of the language is in terms of control by the community. Python looks most promising and I already worked with it, but I am not sure yet. Can anyone recommend a viable alternative for Go? Any web-focused language that is performant, m…

C#, F#, Kotlin, TypeScript/Node (someday Deno)

I wouldn't worry much about "performant" though.