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

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#91

Post by Illniyar » Wed, May 22, 2019, 7:23 AM UTC

munmaek wrote: post #77

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…

You should use a language based on how well it performs for your problem and domain, and the community around it. Not based on one article or because google is maintaining it.

I think his fear of google's stewardship of the language is the fear of what it'll do to the community around it.

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#92

Post by TylerE » Wed, May 22, 2019, 7:24 AM UTC

willtim wrote: post #75

Haskell is an excellent example of a community-driven language. It's more mature and advanced than most commercial offerings too, offering a superior type system, fast and efficient executables, lightweight fiber concurrency, software transactional memory, higher-kinded parametric polymorphism and many more features.

Haven’t most of the top Haskell devs been on the Microsoft payroll for years and years?

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#93

Post by Insanity » Wed, May 22, 2019, 7:25 AM UTC

willtim wrote: post #75

Haskell is an excellent example of a community-driven language. It's more mature and advanced than most commercial offerings too, offering a superior type system, fast and efficient executables, lightweight fiber concurrency, software transactional memory, higher-kinded parametric polymorphism and many more features.

And the community is by far the friendliest I have encountered!

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#94

Post by tannhaeuser » Wed, May 22, 2019, 7:25 AM UTC

z3phyr wrote: post #71

I really like C and common lisp in that they do not seem to be owned/driven by a singular entity

And that they have two excellent, interworking implementations. And a language spec, by ISO even.

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#95

Post by silverdemon » Wed, May 22, 2019, 7:26 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.

10 years is a long time in any business, and Java has been around more than 20. It is pervasive in enterpriseland; if nobody wrote a single line of greenfield Java code it will be around for decades. The COBOL of the modern era!

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#96

Post by kkarakk » Wed, May 22, 2019, 7:26 AM UTC

ehsankia wrote: post #64

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…

Is there any example of a successful large open source project that's truly lead by the community, and not a handful of people that decide what goes in and what doesn't? What would such a model even look like?

you can see it already on github - survival of the fittest fork

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#97

Post by Illniyar » Wed, May 22, 2019, 7:27 AM UTC

theshrike79 wrote: post #43

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.

Are you saying that there aren't garbage collected languages suitable for network development ("moving bits from place to place") with a substantial community except Go?

I mean, Java and all the JVM based languages comes to mind. Python, Ruby, Node.js (assuming performance isn't at the top of your list, which for many it isn't).

Go has a small community compared to all of the other popular languages.

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#98

Post by _ph_ » Wed, May 22, 2019, 7:27 AM UTC

cryptos wrote: post #32

warent wrote: post #14

"... can't we have something like OpenGo ..." > " ... this won't happen ... " I'm confused as to what's stopping someone from forking it, calling it OpenGo, and building a community around that.

This could be done, of course. But how likely is such an approach to succeed? It would effectively create a new language and in turn to a new ecosystem. Why not just use a different language (Rust comes to mind) then?

First of all, Rust is quite a different language to Go, so I wouldn't consider it a drop-in replacement. But this also means, that those, who don't like too many features of Go might really be happier with Rust.

But adding features to Go by popular demand would make it a new language and a new ecosystem. So if that is what people want, they should go ahead with it. Even if it just is an engineering prototype, which showcases features that Google should add to the Go main line.

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#99

Post by ncmncm » Wed, May 22, 2019, 7:27 AM UTC

PetitPrince wrote: post #88

ncmncm wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can fork them and become (or remain) irrelevant. Ios development is a walled garden. C# is barely used except to target Windos. Go? Too early to say. If it did fade away, who would miss it, really ? Its express design purpose was to be not powerful enough to make big mistakes in. Has it transcended that? If so, what is its purpose now? Java has shown staying power, despite its shortcomings, although its connectio…

>C# is barely used except to target Windos The Unity game engine use C# for scripting; I wouldn't call that "barely used".

Anything less than a billion lines counts as "barely used".

Anything less than ten billion lines counts as "little used".

How big is Unity?

Re: Go is Google's language, not ours

#100

Post by fetbaffe » Wed, May 22, 2019, 7:27 AM UTC

rococode wrote: post #66

fetbaffe wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For community driven programming languages I would say PHP, large user base, mature & very active.

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…

Visual Basic was basically(!) killed by Microsoft albeit large protest, so no, putting your trust in one company does not always work.

PHP has been developed very well the past few years as community project, there is an open RFC process with a codified voting process in place. Sure there have been some drama within the community, but that has not affected either the language nor the implementation.

What makes PHP a great fit for a community driven project is that PHP is a pragmatic language in its core. If the general goal of a project is to design a perfect & consistent language then a community driven process is maybe not the best approach.