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> ignoring years of research and good ideas And people are falling over themselves to use Go in places that seem inappropriate. Most of Go's strengths shine in

> ignoring years of research and good ideas And people are falling over themselves to use Go in places that seem inappropriate. Most of Go's strengths shine in a large team of mediocre developers: Low build times, low abstraction, quick ramp-up, etc. So why do startups choose Go? You're just shooting yourself in the foot. Use OCaml, use C++, use Clojure, hell, use Swift or Rust, just use something that at least pretends to care about expressiveness and abstraction. I actively avoid working for shops that use Go heavily, it's an indicator of cargo-culting.

biztos 10y ago
> Most of Go's strengths shine in a large team of mediocre developers: Low build times, low abstraction, quick ramp-up, etc. I find some of those strengths and others shine in a small team of strong developers too, if they "get" Go. But to your point: some people expect their startups to eventually employ a large number of programmers, at which point they will inevitably have some mediocre ones, that being a side effect of "hiring only the best." Planning for that day is not shooting yourself in the foot.
nutheracc 10y ago
You've hit the nail on the head for me at my current place of work. The only alternative I have here is Scala, which I wouldn't choose, but higher quality ecosystem and community, and closer to Rust which I'm enjoying at home, so am thinking of doing the switch.
- runT1ME 10y ago
  I cannot imagine a scenario where Go would be a better fit for a team of skilled engineers (compared to scala). Maybe ramp up time would be the only thing, but even still the dividends you can reap from scala's more complex abstraction are worth the initial investment as they are applicable to multiple projects (as opposed to learning a complex framework or whatnot).
jsmith0295 10y ago
I think it really depends on what kind of software you're writing. At my startup (around 30 engineers) most of what we do is web based, and our backends are mostly written with Java and Spring Boot now. Go is simpler, more productive, has better concurrency, and still has good static analysis. The benefits mostly seem to come from the removal of bullshit rather than the addition of nice abstractions.
TurboHaskal 10y ago
I run a few side projects with a pool of about a dozen developers. Some love Java but others won't touch it, some are C developers, one of them only has experience with PHP, there are lispers, an Erlang zealot and even a Delphi refugee. I personally like Perl and OCaml but couldn't convince them to even consider them. It was a nightmare to agree and settle up with something. Enter Go, and while we all agreed that the language kind of sucks and $FAV_LANG is better, we somehow stopped bike-shedding and started to get real work done. Sure, it's not the most exciting language in the block and its community seems to live in the 70s, but sometimes targeting the lowest common denominator can pay off, as is the case for us.
- pjmlp 10y ago
  > Sure, it's not the most exciting language in the block and its community seems to live in the 70s, but sometimes targeting the lowest common denominator can pay off, as is the case for us. Except that even Algol 68 is more feature rich than Go, assuming a 60's powerful computer, like the Burroughs B5000. :) But I do appreciate that every line of written Go code is one less of written C code.
  - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
    Define "feature". Go thinks fast compile time is a feature. How fast is your Algol 68 compiler on a ten million line code base?
    - pjmlp 10y ago
      Fast enough for a 60's computer, imagine nowadays. But if you want numbers, Turbo Pascal 5.5 was doing 34,000 lines/minute[1] on MS-DOS back in 1989. [1] http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/20803 http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/20803
      - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
        Turbo Pascal isn't Algol 68. A PC in 1989 isn't a B5000. But even accepting the example, 34,000 lines/minute gets you a compile that takes 294 minutes, or just under 5 hours. That's... not very good. Of course faster hardware is part of the answer, but I suspect that it doesn't cover nearly all the ground between Turbo Pascal's compile time and Go's.
themihai 10y ago
You don't know what you are talking about. Have you seen any Swift backend used in production? Would you use C++ for a web API? Go was developed because C++ is a horibble language and I'm glad it didn't adopt the expressiveness and abstraction from C++.
- superswordfish 10y ago
  It really depends on the project. I'd prefer Clojure or Erlang for most frontends, a Lisp for the backend of an expert system, and C++ or OCaml for any heavy lifting. Python still can be a great choice for all sorts of systems too. Swift and Rust aren't quite there yet but for a startup might be worth a look in time. We're not talking about "nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM" business here and being risk-averse is itself risky.
  - themihai 10y ago
    I find swift the worst choice for a start-up right now. Why would you use a language that's only half baked? Don't you have more important things to do than porting the standard library to linux? Not to mention the lack of concurrency. Go can be a grat choice for all sort of systems too and in many cases better than any of the languages you listed. It's about using the right tool for the job and I think your comments about Go are plain ignorant.
    - superswordfish 10y ago
      You're going after my hyperbolic recommendation (it follows "hell,") and calling me ignorant when we merely disagree. This is a waste of time.
- pjmlp 10y ago
  > Have you seen any Swift backend used in production? Lots of iOS applications use it already. > Would you use C++ for a web API? Facebook and Google apparently do use it.
  - 10y ago

biztos 10y ago

> Most of Go's strengths shine in a large team of mediocre developers: Low build times, low abstraction, quick ramp-up, etc. I find some of those strengths and others shine in a small team of strong developers too, if they "get" Go. But to your point: some people expect their startups to eventually employ a large number of programmers, at which point they will inevitably have some mediocre ones, that being a side effect of "hiring only the best." Planning for that day is not shooting yourself in the foot.

nutheracc 10y ago

You've hit the nail on the head for me at my current place of work. The only alternative I have here is Scala, which I wouldn't choose, but higher quality ecosystem and community, and closer to Rust which I'm enjoying at home, so am thinking of doing the switch.

runT1ME 10y ago
I cannot imagine a scenario where Go would be a better fit for a team of skilled engineers (compared to scala). Maybe ramp up time would be the only thing, but even still the dividends you can reap from scala's more complex abstraction are worth the initial investment as they are applicable to multiple projects (as opposed to learning a complex framework or whatnot).

jsmith0295 10y ago

I think it really depends on what kind of software you're writing. At my startup (around 30 engineers) most of what we do is web based, and our backends are mostly written with Java and Spring Boot now. Go is simpler, more productive, has better concurrency, and still has good static analysis. The benefits mostly seem to come from the removal of bullshit rather than the addition of nice abstractions.

TurboHaskal 10y ago

I run a few side projects with a pool of about a dozen developers. Some love Java but others won't touch it, some are C developers, one of them only has experience with PHP, there are lispers, an Erlang zealot and even a Delphi refugee. I personally like Perl and OCaml but couldn't convince them to even consider them. It was a nightmare to agree and settle up with something. Enter Go, and while we all agreed that the language kind of sucks and $FAV_LANG is better, we somehow stopped bike-shedding and started to get real work done. Sure, it's not the most exciting language in the block and its community seems to live in the 70s, but sometimes targeting the lowest common denominator can pay off, as is the case for us.

pjmlp 10y ago
> Sure, it's not the most exciting language in the block and its community seems to live in the 70s, but sometimes targeting the lowest common denominator can pay off, as is the case for us. Except that even Algol 68 is more feature rich than Go, assuming a 60's powerful computer, like the Burroughs B5000. :) But I do appreciate that every line of written Go code is one less of written C code.
- AnimalMuppet 10y ago
  Define "feature". Go thinks fast compile time is a feature. How fast is your Algol 68 compiler on a ten million line code base?
  - pjmlp 10y ago
    Fast enough for a 60's computer, imagine nowadays. But if you want numbers, Turbo Pascal 5.5 was doing 34,000 lines/minute[1] on MS-DOS back in 1989. [1] http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/20803 http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/20803
    - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
      Turbo Pascal isn't Algol 68. A PC in 1989 isn't a B5000. But even accepting the example, 34,000 lines/minute gets you a compile that takes 294 minutes, or just under 5 hours. That's... not very good. Of course faster hardware is part of the answer, but I suspect that it doesn't cover nearly all the ground between Turbo Pascal's compile time and Go's.

themihai 10y ago

You don't know what you are talking about. Have you seen any Swift backend used in production? Would you use C++ for a web API? Go was developed because C++ is a horibble language and I'm glad it didn't adopt the expressiveness and abstraction from C++.

superswordfish 10y ago
It really depends on the project. I'd prefer Clojure or Erlang for most frontends, a Lisp for the backend of an expert system, and C++ or OCaml for any heavy lifting. Python still can be a great choice for all sorts of systems too. Swift and Rust aren't quite there yet but for a startup might be worth a look in time. We're not talking about "nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM" business here and being risk-averse is itself risky.
- themihai 10y ago
  I find swift the worst choice for a start-up right now. Why would you use a language that's only half baked? Don't you have more important things to do than porting the standard library to linux? Not to mention the lack of concurrency. Go can be a grat choice for all sort of systems too and in many cases better than any of the languages you listed. It's about using the right tool for the job and I think your comments about Go are plain ignorant.
  - superswordfish 10y ago
    You're going after my hyperbolic recommendation (it follows "hell,") and calling me ignorant when we merely disagree. This is a waste of time.
pjmlp 10y ago
> Have you seen any Swift backend used in production? Lots of iOS applications use it already. > Would you use C++ for a web API? Facebook and Google apparently do use it.
- 10y ago