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Go was never a systems programming language as soon as it made the decision to be garbage collected. Don't get me wrong: in many cases I like GC but you'll neve

by cletus 11y ago

Go was never a systems programming language as soon as it made the decision to be garbage collected. Don't get me wrong: in many cases I like GC but you'll never dethrone C/C++ for many use cases with a GC language. I find it interesting that many Go pundits I speak to just don't seem to get this. I wouldn't even say Go's target market is Java. I'd say it's actually Python. Rob Pike has spoken about this [1]. I like Python. It's fun but for anything nontrivial I've become disillusioned with it because the supposed productivity gains are offset by having to write unit tests for spelling mistakes and typos. So I like Go for this purpose. It's not quite as expressive as Python but it's in a sweet spot IMHO. [1]: http://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2012/06/less-is-exponentially-more.html http://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2012/06/less-is-exponentia...

nickpsecurity 11y ago
The Oberon and LISP machine people would disagree given they wrote whole OS's and platforms in GC languages. The trick is to support manual control & unsafe where necessary. I know it can work for Go with small changes because it worked for Wirth languages that Go was based on.
osullivj 11y ago
I find PyCharm addresses that Python weakness nicely. I'm sticking with C++ & Python pro tem. When Rust is a little more mature I think I'll invest.
ensignavenger 11y ago
Why do you need to write unit tests for spelling mistakes and typos in Python?
- cobaltblue 11y ago
  It's one class of errors that doesn't typically happen with a static compiled language, people like to feel 'safe' about the dullest things but typos can be found pretty easily by running the code you just wrote in a REPL or at least structuring your application so that you can quickly get it to the same state to test live... But honestly you can just repeat the typos in your tests, or make new ones, in any case for me at least it's a class of error that comes up very rarely regardless of whether I'm using mitigations like auto-complete. And lastly I'd think if you were unit testing "properly", aiming for good coverage, which unit testing advocates will say you must do regardless of a static or dynamic language, your unit tests should catch various typos as a side-benefit. Testing things like int in -> int out or "reading this function it calls these methods on foo, here's a mock foo and we're just going to make sure all of them get called as expected and I didn't misread/mistype either the code or the test code" seems insane.
odonnellryan 11y ago
Hoping latest in type hinting along with IDE support will really kick this one home: https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/help/type-hinting-in-pycharm.html https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/help/type-hinting-in-pycha... I'd love support for "check this project" that would essentially be similar to compiling a Go project. Python is awesome for so many things: - Quick project iteration - Web development - Testing (test suite is actually pretty sweet!) - General purpose programming and scripting Currently, not the most productive tool for large projects or complex projects, or projects where static analysis pays huge dividends (usually this fits in one of the previous two categories anyway). Doesn't mean it has to be: but it'd be really nice to have...

by cletus 11y ago

nickpsecurity 11y ago

The Oberon and LISP machine people would disagree given they wrote whole OS's and platforms in GC languages. The trick is to support manual control & unsafe where necessary. I know it can work for Go with small changes because it worked for Wirth languages that Go was based on.

osullivj 11y ago

I find PyCharm addresses that Python weakness nicely. I'm sticking with C++ & Python pro tem. When Rust is a little more mature I think I'll invest.

ensignavenger 11y ago

Why do you need to write unit tests for spelling mistakes and typos in Python?

cobaltblue 11y ago
It's one class of errors that doesn't typically happen with a static compiled language, people like to feel 'safe' about the dullest things but typos can be found pretty easily by running the code you just wrote in a REPL or at least structuring your application so that you can quickly get it to the same state to test live... But honestly you can just repeat the typos in your tests, or make new ones, in any case for me at least it's a class of error that comes up very rarely regardless of whether I'm using mitigations like auto-complete. And lastly I'd think if you were unit testing "properly", aiming for good coverage, which unit testing advocates will say you must do regardless of a static or dynamic language, your unit tests should catch various typos as a side-benefit. Testing things like int in -> int out or "reading this function it calls these methods on foo, here's a mock foo and we're just going to make sure all of them get called as expected and I didn't misread/mistype either the code or the test code" seems insane.

odonnellryan 11y ago

Hoping latest in type hinting along with IDE support will really kick this one home: https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/help/type-hinting-in-pycharm.html https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/help/type-hinting-in-pycha... I'd love support for "check this project" that would essentially be similar to compiling a Go project. Python is awesome for so many things: - Quick project iteration - Web development - Testing (test suite is actually pretty sweet!) - General purpose programming and scripting Currently, not the most productive tool for large projects or complex projects, or projects where static analysis pays huge dividends (usually this fits in one of the previous two categories anyway). Doesn't mean it has to be: but it'd be really nice to have...