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The Go Programming Language by Brian W. Kernighan, Alan Donovan

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Re: The Go Programming Language by Brian W. Kernighan, Alan Donovan

#91

Post by throwawaykf05 »

CatDevURandom wrote: post #46
sesteel wrote: post #26

Go, with its simplicity, is a gift from the generation of masters to today's professionals, but many of today's professionals appear too ignorant to see the wisdom of the language. It used to drive me crazy when I would read negative comments in r/programming and HN, but I don't even pay attention to the negative comments anymore. The adoption is far better than I was afraid it was going to be.

I agree. And not for nothing, I'm shipping production code, at a real company, with real customers, with real revenue (250m+). Here's the deal -- all programming languages are just tools. Go's great because it's small enough to keep in your head, and simple. It's fast. It promotes composition. And it has sane concurrency. And quite honestly, I am more productive for the things Go left out then it includes. That's not…

>... it's small enough to keep in your head...

While I mostly agree, the flip side of this statement is, the language then does not automatically take care of things that then you have to keep in your head while you're solving the problem.

I guess this is the underlying trade-off people make when using "higher-level" or "lower-level" languages. More "powerful" languages do more for you automatically, but you need more up-front investment in really understanding the language and applying it to the problem at hand.

And since we are all individuals with individual preferences, whatever choice you make is totally valid for you. It does not make sense to look down on the choices of others. On the other hand, there are some concepts that really are well-understood enough and apply to a large spectrum of languages. These should see widespread adoption, and it does not make sense to deny this either.

Re: The Go Programming Language by Brian W. Kernighan, Alan Donovan

#92

Post by theseoafs »

logicallee wrote: post #85
theseoafs wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't even believe this is the kind of comment that gets upvoted on HN nowadays. "Go was made by smart old people and is therefore good. If you don't understand it's good, you're stupid and I refuse to listen to you."

fwiw, I found sesteel's comment useful and informative. (by the way, you might have misread it. I think he didn't mean "generation of masters" as "old smart people" but probably specifically the creators of Go, since they happen to include Rob Pike and Ken Thompson - two people who had separately created the B programming language (immediate predecessor of C), co-created Unix at Bell Labs in the 70's, co-authored a f…

I know who created Go, because everyone does.

Being created by Pike, Thompson, and whoever else does not in and of itself make Go better than any other language. It also does not make it immune to criticism in such a way that you should brush off anyone who has anything negative to say about it.

Re: The Go Programming Language by Brian W. Kernighan, Alan Donovan

#93

Post by sfk »

donatj wrote: post #78
mateuszf wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two words: error handling and generics.

Go's error handling is honestly the best I've ever used. No errors go unhandled. Period. get an error? Return it or deal with it. Makes much more sense than exceptions suddenly breaking the behaviour of the language.

How are errors in deferred functions handled? How about division by zero?

Re: The Go Programming Language by Brian W. Kernighan, Alan Donovan

#94

Post by Veedrac »

throwawaykf05 wrote: post #84
sesteel wrote: post #26

Go, with its simplicity, is a gift from the generation of masters to today's professionals, but many of today's professionals appear too ignorant to see the wisdom of the language. It used to drive me crazy when I would read negative comments in r/programming and HN, but I don't even pay attention to the negative comments anymore. The adoption is far better than I was afraid it was going to be.

This is the first time I've seen the Blub Paradox [1] portrayed as ignorance from the other direction! OK, not a big believer of the "Blub" theory, personally - every language has its place in a continuum of dimensions that are more than just technical, and I actually like Go overall. But "lack of generics" is definitely not the same as "simplicity. Not in the decade we live in. 1. http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?BlubParadox

The Blub Paradox would only apply if the people using Go hadn't used languages with generics (or similar); for the most part that's not true.

> But "lack of generics" is definitely not the same as "simplicity.

It's not literally the same thing, but it is an aspect that keeps Go simple.

Re: The Go Programming Language by Brian W. Kernighan, Alan Donovan

#95

Post by bbradley406 »

theseoafs wrote: post #82
sesteel wrote: post #26

Go, with its simplicity, is a gift from the generation of masters to today's professionals, but many of today's professionals appear too ignorant to see the wisdom of the language. It used to drive me crazy when I would read negative comments in r/programming and HN, but I don't even pay attention to the negative comments anymore. The adoption is far better than I was afraid it was going to be.

I can't even believe this is the kind of comment that gets upvoted on HN nowadays. "Go was made by smart old people and is therefore good. If you don't understand it's good, you're stupid and I refuse to listen to you."

in addition to what logicallee said, it's common for inexperienced programmers to (poorly) "re-invent" concepts that were discovered in the past by those "smart old people". This is caused by a combination of factors, and one of them is the belief that one can solve a problem single-handedly without studying the fundamentals and previous strategies. Ignoring the work of the masters is a good way to start from scratch and do worse.

Re: The Go Programming Language by Brian W. Kernighan, Alan Donovan

#96

Post by dvirsky »

meddlepal wrote: post #63

I look forward to the time when Go adds generics and all the people who told me that you don't need generics in Go start telling me how awesome and super-duper useful generics are.

I haven't heard anyone, including the go authors, say that generics are bad and you absolutely don't need them in Go.

Personally I like Go a lot and don't miss generics much, but for some things I'd love to use generics some day. It's basically about trade-offs eventually. To quote the FAQ about it:

> enerics may well be added at some point. We don't feel an urgency for them, although we understand some programmers do.

> Generics are convenient but they come at a cost in complexity in the type system and run-time. We haven't yet found a design that gives value proportionate to the complexity, although we continue to think about it.

Re: The Go Programming Language by Brian W. Kernighan, Alan Donovan

#97

Post by talideon »

sesteel wrote: post #26

Go, with its simplicity, is a gift from the generation of masters to today's professionals, but many of today's professionals appear too ignorant to see the wisdom of the language. It used to drive me crazy when I would read negative comments in r/programming and HN, but I don't even pay attention to the negative comments anymore. The adoption is far better than I was afraid it was going to be.

My only real issue with it is that I really with it had algebraic types. That would save me a tonne of faffing about and help make code safer to boot. Type switches are a clumsy alternative that only cover some of the cases.

Re: The Go Programming Language by Brian W. Kernighan, Alan Donovan

#98

Post by logicallee »

theseoafs wrote: post #92
logicallee wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

fwiw, I found sesteel's comment useful and informative. (by the way, you might have misread it. I think he didn't mean "generation of masters" as "old smart people" but probably specifically the creators of Go, since they happen to include Rob Pike and Ken Thompson - two people who had separately created the B programming language (immediate predecessor of C), co-created Unix at Bell Labs in the 70's, co-authored a f…

I know who created Go, because everyone does. Being created by Pike, Thompson, and whoever else does not in and of itself make Go better than any other language. It also does not make it immune to criticism in such a way that you should brush off anyone who has anything negative to say about it.

>Being created by Pike, Thompson, and whoever else does not in and of itself make Go better than any other language.

which is why I called your parent useful and informative.

Re: The Go Programming Language by Brian W. Kernighan, Alan Donovan

#99

Post by sesteel »

theseoafs wrote: post #82
sesteel wrote: post #26

Go, with its simplicity, is a gift from the generation of masters to today's professionals, but many of today's professionals appear too ignorant to see the wisdom of the language. It used to drive me crazy when I would read negative comments in r/programming and HN, but I don't even pay attention to the negative comments anymore. The adoption is far better than I was afraid it was going to be.

I can't even believe this is the kind of comment that gets upvoted on HN nowadays. "Go was made by smart old people and is therefore good. If you don't understand it's good, you're stupid and I refuse to listen to you."

For the record, ignorant does not equal stupid, being a master does not mean you are old, and ignoring negativity (which I should have done here) does not mean I refuse to listen to you. I was simply trying to convey that the rocket has left the launch pad and people will be exposed to the language professionally whether they like it or not. I am finally free of feeling like I need to defend the language to others. It is somewhat liberating.

Re: The Go Programming Language by Brian W. Kernighan, Alan Donovan

#100

Post by jksmith »

monocasa wrote: post #57
microtonal wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Error handling is something that I did get used to, especially considering that one can assign and check in an if-statement. Generics I still miss every single day. But not enough to stop using Go. It's pretty much C with interfaces, a garbage collector, and safety. What more can one wish for?

No garbage collector so I can actually use it in embedded situations.

Easy target response I know, but hey it's open source so fork it.
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