Leaving Go

#1

Post by beNjiox » Mon, Apr 28, 2014, 4:18 PM UTC

Leaving Go
jozefg.bitbucket.org

Re: Leaving Go

#2

Post by pjmlp » Mon, Apr 28, 2014, 4:27 PM UTC

I had similar reasons, but on my case the language was still at pre-1.0.

Re: Leaving Go

#3

Post by DAddYE » Mon, Apr 28, 2014, 4:28 PM UTC

> I’ve been using Go since November and I’ve decided that it’s time to give it up for my hobby projects. I’d still be happy to use it professionally, but I find that programming in Go isn’t “fun” in the same way that Python, Haskell, or Lisp is.

I can't leave go, but indeed I think absolutely the same. The thing is that GO was designed to replace c++ thing that absolutely failed. So we have a python/ruby replacement with very old patterns (I think manual checking errors ie.).

Indeed I think go is an awesome language but sometimes I really feel like a monkey repeating myself over and over again.

Re: Leaving Go

#4

Post by vfclists » Mon, Apr 28, 2014, 4:30 PM UTC

Try Nimrod. Or Julia.

I haven't tried them yet, but it looks like their fun.

Re: Leaving Go

#5

Post by chimeracoder » Mon, Apr 28, 2014, 4:31 PM UTC

As someone who writes both Lisp and Go (and enjoys both), I find it odd that this article uses Lisp and Haskell as points of comparison.

> programming in Go isn’t “fun” in the same way that Python, Haskell, or Lisp is.

Yes, writing Lisp is much more "fun" than writing Go for me. But writing Go is much more productive and maintainable (both for solo projects and for larger groups).

In fact, this is almost an intentional "feature" of Go: http://aerokode.com/blog/go-is-boring

> The idea is that there’s simply no way that any group of designers could imagine how people will want to use their language so making it easy to extend solves the problem wonderfully.

On the other hand, there's no way of making a language so easily extensible while also maintaining relatively uniform idiomatic, design, and style conventions across a language community. Go very heavily favors the latter.

> In Lisp, CLOS (Common Lisp Object System) was originally a library. It was a user defined abstraction that was so popular it was ported into the standard.

CLOS is actually very similar in some ways to Go's structs. Both emphasize encapsulating data inside an "entity" (object/struct), and separating the notion of behavior from that entity. To quote one of the language authors from GopherCon[0]: "Interfaces separate data from behavior. Classes conflate them."

Lisp was "designed" (if you can call it that) around the principle that extending a language should be as easy as writing a program in that language. Go was designed around the principle that there should be only one dialect of the programming language, for the sake of cohesiveness. It's a stronger assertion of the Pythonic motto, "There should be one, and preferably only one, obvious way to do it".

[0] https://twitter.com/chimeracoder/status/459827405386162176

Re: Leaving Go

#6

Post by gdulli » Mon, Apr 28, 2014, 4:32 PM UTC

The agreeableness of Python is the reason I settled on it after experience with a bunch of other languages. I was starting to find software engineering to be a chore and was losing interest in it until I started using Python. No language is best at everything, and all the ways python isn't the best have been worked around without much bother.

Go did not strike me as a language I would enjoy writing, despite the strengths it surely has in some areas. I would just be giving up other strengths I prioritize more highly.

Re: Leaving Go

#7

Post by lmm » Mon, Apr 28, 2014, 4:34 PM UTC

Does anyone actually use CLOS? It's always held up as this great example of language extensibility, but my impression is that since it's not part of the core language Lisp folk tend to create their own abstractions instead.

Re: Leaving Go

#8

Post by taylorlapeyre » Mon, Apr 28, 2014, 4:35 PM UTC

I just wanted to point out that the author of this article is a high school student.

http://jozefg.bitbucket.org/about.html

Re: Leaving Go

#9

Post by lmm » Mon, Apr 28, 2014, 4:36 PM UTC

DAddYE wrote: post #3

> I’ve been using Go since November and I’ve decided that it’s time to give it up for my hobby projects. I’d still be happy to use it professionally, but I find that programming in Go isn’t “fun” in the same way that Python, Haskell, or Lisp is. I can't leave go, but indeed I think absolutely the same. The thing is that GO was designed to replace c++ thing that absolutely failed. So we have a python/ruby replacement…

Why can't you leave go? Haskell may have a steeper initial learning curve but I can't think of any environment where go is usable and Haskell isn't.

(To me OCaml seems like a better replacement for a lot of what people are doing in go, but admittedly it doesn't have the same concurrency support)

Re: Leaving Go

#10

Post by masklinn » Mon, Apr 28, 2014, 4:37 PM UTC

chimeracoder wrote: post #5

As someone who writes both Lisp and Go (and enjoys both), I find it odd that this article uses Lisp and Haskell as points of comparison. > programming in Go isn’t “fun” in the same way that Python, Haskell, or Lisp is. Yes, writing Lisp is much more "fun" than writing Go for me. But writing Go is much more productive and maintainable (both for solo projects and for larger groups). In fact, this is almost an intention…

> CLOS is actually very similar in some ways to Go's structs.

You've completely missed the article's point: users were able to create CLOS before it got integrated in the language.