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Choosing Go to implement the new GOV.UK router

gdstechnology.blog.gov.uk

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Re: Choosing Go to implement the new GOV.UK router

#91

Post by txutxu »

mseepgood wrote: post #45
txutxu wrote: post #35

Something is wrong with this statement: "Scala is great for performance, but quite bad at resource usage" Maybe it's directly related to the next statement: "No-one in the core GOV.UK team had a deep knowledge of Scala, and particularly how the old router worked" But the first statement, literally, does not make sense on its own.

> But the first statement, literally, does not make sense on its own. Why? There are other resources than CPU time, e.g. memory.

"Computer performance is characterized by the amount of useful work accomplished by a computer system compared to the time and resources used." --wikipedia

Is there a different definition I'm missing? I think, a car can be "fast" and take too much fuel, but (in my book) a programming language cannot be "great for performance" while being bad at resource usage.

Re: Choosing Go to implement the new GOV.UK router

#92

Post by ed_blackburn »

csmuk wrote: post #23
ed_blackburn wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably by having a list of different technologies they are taking the approach of right tool for the job. The obvious side affect also being that engineers who work on this need to be polyglot as opposed to any specific tech. I certainly categorise this as a good thing, a developer and as a stakeholder (UK resident and user of the site).

Actually they're using the wrong tools for the job because they're having to rewrite bits regularly in different tech. There is obviously no evaluation taking place. Establishing technical standards and homogenity is important on projects of this scale.

Maybe. Maybe not. The proof is in the pudding. It's immeasautably better than before and is a lot cheaper to run. Until otherwise I am of the opinion that they are making the right decisions.

Re: Choosing Go to implement the new GOV.UK router

#93

Post by polymatter »

csmuk wrote: post #26
petepete wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In their defence, gov.uk is miles better than just about any other government site/application I've ever used.

Oh definitely agree. I'm not dissing the site itself which is marvellous so far, but the technology churn is very concerning.

Allowing staff to use "language of the week" can be an excellent way of retaining staff when you can't pay them market rates.

Re: Choosing Go to implement the new GOV.UK router

#94

Post by ollysb »

blah314 wrote: post #87
ollysb wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why you have such a negative attitude towards gov.uk, the site seems refreshingly good at it's job. It's simple, clear and easy to use. As long as they can execute fast what does the tech stack matter?

Try doing something with it (eg apply for a tax disk). At that point it always hands back control to the old site(s) it "replaced".

I think it's fair to say it's going to take a little while to migrate all of the systems over. Give credit where it's due, they're doing a good job with the new site and I'm sure that when it arrives the replacement for the tax disc application will be of a similar standard.

Re: Choosing Go to implement the new GOV.UK router

#95

Post by enneff »

Zenst wrote: post #79
thu wrote: post #7

That seems weird to me: * No one having a deep knowledge of Scala is mentioned as a problem, but they will learn Go. * They rule out a language because of its syntax.

I agree, but if you want to learn something today then GO would fit better for the task at hand and easier to learn. That and the cost involved is really good value given the training involved with learning Scala over GO. That and I suspect there was some wishlists on what people wanted to do in the mix, like COBOL, still used but people just do not want to learn that as it is deemed so last century in comparsision t…

"Go" is not an acronym.

Re: Choosing Go to implement the new GOV.UK router

#96

Post by Zenst »

enneff wrote: post #95
Zenst wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but if you want to learn something today then GO would fit better for the task at hand and easier to learn. That and the cost involved is really good value given the training involved with learning Scala over GO. That and I suspect there was some wishlists on what people wanted to do in the mix, like COBOL, still used but people just do not want to learn that as it is deemed so last century in comparsision t…

"Go" is not an acronym.

I know, sorry got carried away with that caps key.

Re: Choosing Go to implement the new GOV.UK router

#97

Post by CmonDev »

rossj wrote: post #82
CmonDev wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you always need to use all the features the language provides. Simpler -> limited.

C is much simpler than Scala, is it more limited?

In it's expressive ability - definitely. In terms of implementing stuff, everything that is Turing-complete could be used.

Re: Choosing Go to implement the new GOV.UK router

#98

Post by ratio »

csmuk wrote: post #3

Not impressed. I have nothing against Go (in fact I like it) but they seem to have built GOV.UK with every damn bit of technology there is available. I've seen Varnish, Go, Ruby, Python, Scala, Java, Mongo, MySQL, nginx, rails, sinatra, Django and PILES of Not Invented Here. Also I'm not sure it's a great use of public money to build stuff like this when they should have nginx/apache up front and some configuration.…

Not impressed. Seriously, this is just awful.

People make changes to their infrastructure. The govuk team are at least brave enough to blog about it, and offer the code up for inspection. Can you post links to similar public contributions you have made?

I'm sure if you joined the team you'd wave your magic wand and everyone would fall in line, and things would be beautiful. Right.

Oh, and I'm sure the golang community are really, really pleased that "in fact, [you] like it" - very charitable of you!

I can't wait to see what you've been up to.

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