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> Golang competes more with gc languages/runtimes like Python/Ruby/Nodejs. I still cannot even grasp this trope. Seems like some try to apply "fake it till you

by odiroot 11y ago

> Golang competes more with gc languages/runtimes like Python/Ruby/Nodejs. I still cannot even grasp this trope. Seems like some try to apply "fake it till you make it" approach. To me, coming from Python and Node (and a bit Ruby) development it seems as a completely opposite direction -- similar to going back to C++ or Java (where I started myself). If not for the quirky syntax and lack of generics I would personally pose it as a replacement for the C++ itself. Rust on the other hand seems to me to be the most promising out of these three as a systems language.

jasode 11y ago
>I still cannot even grasp this trope. Seems like some try to apply "fake it till you make it" approach. It's not a fake trope. There are tons of blog posts from programmers describing experiences of switching from Ruby+Rails to Go, or Python+Django to Go, or Javscript+NodeJs to Go. Some defections were high profile such as Nodejs uber-contributor TJ Holowaychuk switching to Go. Compare that to virtually zero notable stories of C++ projects switching to Go. If people are using C/C++, they very likely depend on it for the performance characteristics and therefore switching to Go to suffer a speed penalty makes no sense. On the other hand, people leaving Python/Ruby report performance gains. That's why the reality on the ground looks the way it does.
- cbr 11y ago
  Compare that to virtually zero notable stories of C++ projects switching to Go. A lot of projects at Google have switched from C++ to Go, and the people I know who work on them are pretty excited about working in Go. Here's a blog post by a coworker who leads the Chrome Data Compression Proxy project: http://matt-welsh.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/rewriting-large-production-system-in-go.html http://matt-welsh.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/rewriting-large-pro...
  - jasode 11y ago
    Thanks for the example. I think your coworkers' rewrite further reinforces the "sweet spot" for Go. The transcoding was left as C++ but the other stuff including the networking was rewritten in Go. That makes sense to me because transcoding is performance intensive and cpu-bound instead of io-bound. (E.g. CPUs pegged at 100% while bytes being read at a slow 10MB/sec.) In other words, if people tried to rewrite ffmpeg in Golang, a conversion job such as avi to mp4 would run slower. If Google's internal cpu-bound projects switched from C++ to Golang, that would be a very interesting data point. In other words, I don't expect Google would switch their machine-learning algorithms scanning petabytes of data from C++ to Go (or create greenfield machine learning projects using Go instead of C++).
  - akerro 11y ago
    Well... you know, G+ is full of Google Employees...
- odiroot 11y ago
  Performance is not always the most important factor. Also I don't know about Ruby but Python is moving really fast with PyPy. We also have Cython. This is where I'd go when the extreme performance is needed. This way you can avoid compromising on other important factors (libraries, accumulated know-how, even syntax and development tools). In case of NodeJS it's even more baffling.
  - Ded7xSEoPKYNsDd 11y ago
    > Performance is not always the most important factor. But then why would anyone choose C++ for such a project, in 2015? (Aside from people who only use C++ and therefore wouldn't use Go either.) (I can think of a number of other reasons, like exposing C interfaces or interoperating with GC'd languages, but I don't see how Go fits these things any better than most other GC'd languages.)
    - hellofunk 11y ago
      A lot of it is due to library support; C++ has libraries in physics and graphics haven't yet been written in other languages. Another is the lightweight possibilities for C++ makes it possible to install and run good apps on tiny machines like Pis, where installing Java can be much more challenging. C++ is also a great language for iOS and OSX development for those who are not satisfied with Objective-C or Swift.
      - jernfrost 11y ago
        If you use C++ instead of Objective-C or Swift for iOS/OS X development then it is just because you refuse to learn something new. The only use for C++ on iOS/OS X would be algorithm heavy code. C++ is a poor language for dealing with GUI or higher level concepts in an app. Compare the elegance of stuff like Core Data, bindings, target-action, undo framework, predicate filter using Objective-C with how kludgy stuff like that ends up in C++. I know because I have tried implementing similar stuff in C++. It is possible but it looks like shit.
        11y ago
- alfalfasprout 11y ago
  People also seem to underestimate the performance difference. Sure, Go is around 20% slower than unoptimized C/C++ (at least, with a numerically heavy algorithmic trading library I use that I've ported to Go). But when I use a great C++ compiler that vectorizes and gives me hints to improve cache performance (eg; Intel's compiler) it's often 2-3x slower. In a tight loop, you can't afford to have a gc or green-threads or a runtime for that matter. You want excellent cache performance, minimal context switching, and very predictable memory access patterns. Manual memory management is here to stay. Don't get me wrong, I love Go (for the right uses) but it's just never going to be a replacement for C/C++/Fortran for high performance code.
arethuza 11y ago
I've actually considered Go for a personal project over my usual Python - the deployment simplicity of Go (a single executable) being a big attraction. Where I am puzzled is people viewing Go as something comparable to C/C++ - it seems on a completely different level to me.

by odiroot 11y ago

jasode 11y ago

>I still cannot even grasp this trope. Seems like some try to apply "fake it till you make it" approach. It's not a fake trope. There are tons of blog posts from programmers describing experiences of switching from Ruby+Rails to Go, or Python+Django to Go, or Javscript+NodeJs to Go. Some defections were high profile such as Nodejs uber-contributor TJ Holowaychuk switching to Go. Compare that to virtually zero notable stories of C++ projects switching to Go. If people are using C/C++, they very likely depend on it for the performance characteristics and therefore switching to Go to suffer a speed penalty makes no sense. On the other hand, people leaving Python/Ruby report performance gains. That's why the reality on the ground looks the way it does.

cbr 11y ago
Compare that to virtually zero notable stories of C++ projects switching to Go. A lot of projects at Google have switched from C++ to Go, and the people I know who work on them are pretty excited about working in Go. Here's a blog post by a coworker who leads the Chrome Data Compression Proxy project: http://matt-welsh.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/rewriting-large-production-system-in-go.html http://matt-welsh.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/rewriting-large-pro...
- jasode 11y ago
  Thanks for the example. I think your coworkers' rewrite further reinforces the "sweet spot" for Go. The transcoding was left as C++ but the other stuff including the networking was rewritten in Go. That makes sense to me because transcoding is performance intensive and cpu-bound instead of io-bound. (E.g. CPUs pegged at 100% while bytes being read at a slow 10MB/sec.) In other words, if people tried to rewrite ffmpeg in Golang, a conversion job such as avi to mp4 would run slower. If Google's internal cpu-bound projects switched from C++ to Golang, that would be a very interesting data point. In other words, I don't expect Google would switch their machine-learning algorithms scanning petabytes of data from C++ to Go (or create greenfield machine learning projects using Go instead of C++).
- akerro 11y ago
  Well... you know, G+ is full of Google Employees...
odiroot 11y ago
Performance is not always the most important factor. Also I don't know about Ruby but Python is moving really fast with PyPy. We also have Cython. This is where I'd go when the extreme performance is needed. This way you can avoid compromising on other important factors (libraries, accumulated know-how, even syntax and development tools). In case of NodeJS it's even more baffling.
- Ded7xSEoPKYNsDd 11y ago
  > Performance is not always the most important factor. But then why would anyone choose C++ for such a project, in 2015? (Aside from people who only use C++ and therefore wouldn't use Go either.) (I can think of a number of other reasons, like exposing C interfaces or interoperating with GC'd languages, but I don't see how Go fits these things any better than most other GC'd languages.)
  - hellofunk 11y ago
    A lot of it is due to library support; C++ has libraries in physics and graphics haven't yet been written in other languages. Another is the lightweight possibilities for C++ makes it possible to install and run good apps on tiny machines like Pis, where installing Java can be much more challenging. C++ is also a great language for iOS and OSX development for those who are not satisfied with Objective-C or Swift.
    - jernfrost 11y ago
      If you use C++ instead of Objective-C or Swift for iOS/OS X development then it is just because you refuse to learn something new. The only use for C++ on iOS/OS X would be algorithm heavy code. C++ is a poor language for dealing with GUI or higher level concepts in an app. Compare the elegance of stuff like Core Data, bindings, target-action, undo framework, predicate filter using Objective-C with how kludgy stuff like that ends up in C++. I know because I have tried implementing similar stuff in C++. It is possible but it looks like shit.
      - 11y ago
alfalfasprout 11y ago
People also seem to underestimate the performance difference. Sure, Go is around 20% slower than unoptimized C/C++ (at least, with a numerically heavy algorithmic trading library I use that I've ported to Go). But when I use a great C++ compiler that vectorizes and gives me hints to improve cache performance (eg; Intel's compiler) it's often 2-3x slower. In a tight loop, you can't afford to have a gc or green-threads or a runtime for that matter. You want excellent cache performance, minimal context switching, and very predictable memory access patterns. Manual memory management is here to stay. Don't get me wrong, I love Go (for the right uses) but it's just never going to be a replacement for C/C++/Fortran for high performance code.

arethuza 11y ago

I've actually considered Go for a personal project over my usual Python - the deployment simplicity of Go (a single executable) being a big attraction. Where I am puzzled is people viewing Go as something comparable to C/C++ - it seems on a completely different level to me.