Go is Google's language, not ours

Post by apta » Wed, May 22, 2019, 9:10 PM UTC

pron wrote: post #527

pjmlp wrote: post #520

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As former Java dev, returned into .NET world, I don't consider it a mistake, the CLR was designed with multiple languages in mind, and there are plenty of options available, even if Scala devs failed at that. On the other hand, what I consider a major mistake from Java side was ignoring value types and AOT compilation since it's inception. Had Sun blessed such features since the beginning, and many use cases for C an…

Value types add complexity and they weren't necessary in 1995. They only became necessary due to hardware changes circa 2005. Similarly, AOT compilation has only become attractive for the kinds of applications people use Java for only recently, when startup time became important for serverless. The lack of neither has caused Java lasting damage; what has is the domination of the browser on the client, but that has af…

Post by apta » Wed, May 22, 2019, 9:16 PM UTC

divan wrote: post #538

apta wrote: post #516

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The logical thing to do is to build on what other languages did, and use established practices. Comparing what Rust did to golang when it comes to generics for example is enough to show the mentality of the golang authors refusing to look at established work.

I disagree, as I remember a lot of talks and articles from Go team members where they discuss in detail established work in other languages – on GC, on language evolution, on generics and so on – and deliberately learn from them to avoid same mistakes.

Post by musicale » Wed, May 22, 2019, 9:26 PM UTC

Post by coldtea » Wed, May 22, 2019, 9:57 PM UTC

playing_colours wrote: post #259

cfcf14 wrote: post #214

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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…

Post by coldtea » Wed, May 22, 2019, 10:04 PM UTC

mcguire wrote: post #547

nfriedly wrote: post #504

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That part about JS is pretty much the story of my career - I started out completely hating JS, was forced to use it enough to get more familiar with it, and eventually eventually started enjoying it to the point that it's now the primary language I write. (I still hate it occasionally, but there's a lot more joy these days.) The initial turning point was probably around the first release of jQuery...

[Javascript isn't actually that bad of a language. It really is about 90% of Scheme plus prototype inheritance, which takes some getting used to but ... eh, it's as good as any other option. The problem was that it was one of the battlefields between Microsoft and Netscape and has some really hideous scars in the landscape.] I did not write this. My fingers did not type it. Nothing to see here. Move along. I'm a hedg…