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Go is Google's language, not ours

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Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#411

Post by scott_s »

mieseratte wrote: post #336
read_if_gay_ wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'll never forgive the addition of `var` to the language. I'm inexperienced with Java and didn't know this existed until I saw your post. It seems like a nice shorthand to me. Can you explain why you don't like it?

I'm of the mind that it is un-Java like. Whether or not there is a "Java" as a philosophy is not the hill I'm trying to die on. Consider these contrived lines of code: ``` String first = someMethodCall(); var second = someMethodCall(); ``` The first provides more useful information at a glance. I don't see any value in the "nice shorthand." Typing out "SomeStupidClassName" has never once been a material bottleneck in…

If explicitly naming the type is better, then do that. I find it useful for cases such as:

  OurConfabulatorWithADashOfSpice confab = new OurConfabulatorWithADashOfSpice();
Versus:

  var confab = new OurConfabulatorWithADashOfSpice();

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#412

Post by jstimpfle »

pjmlp wrote: post #163
ncmncm wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guess away, but both C and C++ broke out of Bell control very, very quickly by language standards. Now they are driven by ISO Standards bodies, with many, many participants -- ATT not among them anymore, to my knowledge. Even in 1995 ATT had nothing approaching veto power. My remarks lumping Java in with C# and Swift are transparent wishful thinking.

Those ISO standards cost 100 euros on average per language version.

Isn't it that all ISO standards cost money?

I'm sure you were perfectly aware of it, but C and C++ working drafts are almost identical (I think? Never bought an ISO version), and available for free from open-std.org. For example, http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/standards

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#413

Post by [deleted] »

chrisweekly wrote: post #317
B-Con wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the general point though. Community pressure would have produced generics under a different leadership model that wants to check the box. Whether this is the right decision for this specific issue is a different story. But the fact that they aren't checking boxes for the sake of it is evidence of this style WAI.

WAI?

[deleted]

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#414

Post by weberc2 »

naikrovek wrote: post #235
reflexer wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wrt a "proper" way: adding item to a slice, uhmm?

A slice isn't an array. A slice is a view into an array. You don't look through a window in your house into the backyard, and plant a tree in the backyard by fiddling with the window. It's the same with arrays and slices in Go. If you want to insert an item into a slice, insert it into the array (by copying to a new array and adding your new element to it while copying), then creating a new slice which includes your…

This is absolutely not best practice. It's perfectly idiomatic to insert an item into a slice (without the copy shenanigans you describe). The slice will manage the copy if necessary.

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#415

Post by chimeracoder »

pjmlp wrote: post #155
remus wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that the go core team has committed to adding generics I don't think it's fair to say they don't listen to critique from the community. Is there a more contentious issue in go?!

Not really, that is the hand waving when the issue ever pops up. Rob Pike already stated publicly that he is against the proposed idea for Go 2.0. "Rob Pike - Go 2 Draft Specifications" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIvL2ONhFBI

> Rob Pike already stated publicly that he is against the proposed idea for Go 2.0.

Rob Pike is not a member of the Go team anymore, and he has not been for several years.

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#416

Post by ok_coo »

jaabe wrote: post #167
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…

Is modern PHP really that bad? I kind of think it makes a lot of sense in a world where almost everything, even major government IT systems, are basically java/.net on the backend and some JavaScript MVVM framework on the client. I know a guy who works with laravel, and we’ve teased him so much about PHP over the years, because PHP. The truth is, that his backend is actually more suited for the modern world than what…

I started doing PHP dev during the 5.2, 5.3 times and since 7, it feels much better to program in. It even has RoR-like frameworks like Laravel. So, use Symfony or Laravel if you need to use PHP.

It has some historical baggage that some people can't get over. Nothing, no programming language will be perfect. If I had to start all over, I'd probably use something else but it works great for what I'm doing. (web dev with Laravel)

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#417

Post by weberc2 »

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.

Go is a language for software engineering, which entails pragmatic human factors. It's not a computer science language, which emphasizes theory.

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#418

Post by baby »

Security consultant here. I have audited many codebases in many languages. Go is by far the easiest language to audit: it always looks the same, it's not too verbose, there are no generics or OOP. Coincidentally it's always the most secure as well. My take on this is that it is easier to see logic problems because it is easier to read, understand and reason about. On top of that the standard library does so much for you with crypto and security.

Generics and zero-cost abstraction can and are concepts that are often abused instead of used when it makes sense. I hope thay Go will never support generics because I sincerly believe it might mean the end of the language

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#419

Post by qpiox »

slykar wrote: post #356
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 wonder why so many companies are happily paying Oracle [...] instead of sponsoring an open source project like PostgreSQL. Corporate world is ruled by liability. When you are working on a multi-million dollar project and the database breaks, you want to be able to put as much responsibility on the 3-rd party as much as possible. Open Source projects come with no guarantee. If someone hacks into a system because o…

> * is responsible and needs to pay your million dollar fine.

This is not really true. AFAIK there is no commercial software that has a license clause making the manufacturer liable if you loose your data due to faults in their product.

We lost a couple of TB due to bad OS/firmware in a NAS. The manufacturer did everything they knew trying to fix it, but in the end failed and we lost the data.

Once we lost a crucial virtual machine and backups due to human error. It was not the manufacturer of the virtualization solution that helped us get it back, because they did not have such tools and did not provide such services. Hackers who were reverse engineering the software and publishing their reversed code on the net helped us get the VM image back.

After these two and some other situations I am even stronger proponent for open source, because with open source you have the option to try help yourself if the manufacturer won't or can't help you. I am not just proponent, in fact if I was to be involved in decision making, it would be open-source solution throughout. Of course with support. If possible I'd pay for support services to the original developers.

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#420

Post by new4thaccount »

cfcf14 wrote: post #252
new4thaccount wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What type of numerical computing do you do? By that, I mean what is the problem domain?

Mostly machine learning for distributed sensor networks (ie: smart meters). Deal with lots of time-series data, state space modelling, some recurrent neural nets (etc). Our shop has a 'golang only' thing going, which means that I end up having to reimplement algorithms in go sometimes from scratch.

I saw on the Adacore website a success story for another company that sells smart metering products, so it is nice to see all the work in this space. There are plenty of major vendors as well with smart meter products and the accompanying software.

What company do you work for by the way if you can say?

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