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I'm going to fundamentally disagree with at least the target of Go. Go introduced a series of concurrency primitives with syntax that's made writing and reasoni

I'm going to fundamentally disagree with at least the target of Go. Go introduced a series of concurrency primitives with syntax that's made writing and reasoning about concurrent code a joy, something that's not the case in Java/C++/C/Python (maybe up till the late 3.X in the case of Python), and it did that with a language paradigm (interface driven) that's vastly different from Python's mixture of OOP and duck-typing. And sorry, but "I wonder how much the industry could advance if we could simply persuade every developer to learn Java Postgres."? Plenty of other people would say "I wonder how far along the industry would be if you people would actually learn how to manage your memory and write C". Plenty of other people would say "I wonder how far the industry would have progressed if we let go of the harmful and outdated concept of imperative programming and embraced functional paradigms." ... and on it goes. ----------------- Additionally, you say "I do find it truly sad how anti-intellectualism is pervading our industry" only to end your post with "why can't we abandon all our experimenting and learning and just stick to good old Java which obviously would solve all our problems", which is itself MASSIVELY anti-intellectual.

flukus 10y ago
> "why can't we abandon all our experimenting and learning and just stick to good old Java which obviously would solve all our problems", which is itself MASSIVELY anti-intellectual. That's a mis-characterization. There is a difference between experimenting and learning and pushing all sorts of questionable fashion trends into production.
- lelandbatey 10y ago
  While true, the "pushing" being done is a very small compared to only the "development" of said technologies. The exact words of the parent where: > I wonder how much the industry could advance if we could simply persuade every developer to learn Java Postgres. And that is preceded by what I can only described as a bunch of undue mischaracterization of several languages and technologies, all of which definitely seems to imply that "yeah, all that other stuff is just a bunch of fads, why don't we stick to the real deal and all write Java." Now, I don't want to be unkind to Java here. It's true that Java is an incredibly powerful language and there are a wide variety of technologies and tools that are absolutely incredible that you can only get via the Java ecosystem. But that can be said of many languages, e.g. C++/C. I think what the GP may have meant, and which I do agree with, is that our industry would progress if we as developers spent a bit more time learning about the context and history of current and past solutions. We'd probably re-invent the wheel a bit less often. But I don't want to limit that recommendation to "learn Java Postgres". I think Java developers might benefit from examining the benefits of a language like Haskell, Python programmers may benefit from a language with strong typing, such as C++/Rust/Go, that Unix lovers might learn a lot from examining the Windows NT kernel API's, and so on. If we examine the things that aren't close to us, the things with which we're the least familiar, that's when I believe the most fruitful learning can occur.
  - flukus 10y ago
    I took the GP in a very figurative way as well. A lot of the learning being done at the moment though is simply framework churn, there are developers out their familiar with a million web and client side frameworks that would have been much better served learning SQL. Our apps would be better if we focused more and learning about usability and our users than on CSS compilers. As an industry I think we're under serving everyone right now, people have machines a thousand times more powerful than a couple of decades ago but what they can do with them is almost identical.
yummyfajitas 10y ago
Go didn't "introduce" CSP or actor like primitives. Scala had actors in 2006, I think Clojure has for a similar amount of time as well. There have been libraries for it in Java and C++ also since the early 2000's and probably earlier. Plenty of other people would say "I wonder how far along the industry would be if you people would actually learn how to manage your memory and write C". I don't see the industry gravitating towards bad re-implementations of C with less functionality and a flatter learning curve. The only "replacement" for C that I'm aware of is Rust, and Rust is most definitely not anti-intellectual in the same way I criticize Go. Rust actually requires the developer to learn new concepts (borrow checker) which are not found in C, Python, Java, etc. "why can't we abandon all our experimenting and learning and just stick to good old Java which obviously would solve all our problems", which is itself MASSIVELY anti-intellectual. I didn't say to end experiments. I said everyone should actually learn some fundamentals before jumping on low-learning curve bandwagons which offer nothing new.
- geodel 10y ago
  > Rust actually requires the developer to learn new concepts (borrow checker) Well they do not want GC for their language hence borrow checker while Go already has an excellent GC. As opposed to learning new things we need useful new things which couldn't be done before fancy new language.
  - yummyfajitas 10y ago
    So what can you do in Go that you couldn't do (without a lot more difficulty) in Java or Haskell?

flukus 10y ago

> "why can't we abandon all our experimenting and learning and just stick to good old Java which obviously would solve all our problems", which is itself MASSIVELY anti-intellectual. That's a mis-characterization. There is a difference between experimenting and learning and pushing all sorts of questionable fashion trends into production.

lelandbatey 10y ago
While true, the "pushing" being done is a very small compared to only the "development" of said technologies. The exact words of the parent where: > I wonder how much the industry could advance if we could simply persuade every developer to learn Java Postgres. And that is preceded by what I can only described as a bunch of undue mischaracterization of several languages and technologies, all of which definitely seems to imply that "yeah, all that other stuff is just a bunch of fads, why don't we stick to the real deal and all write Java." Now, I don't want to be unkind to Java here. It's true that Java is an incredibly powerful language and there are a wide variety of technologies and tools that are absolutely incredible that you can only get via the Java ecosystem. But that can be said of many languages, e.g. C++/C. I think what the GP may have meant, and which I do agree with, is that our industry would progress if we as developers spent a bit more time learning about the context and history of current and past solutions. We'd probably re-invent the wheel a bit less often. But I don't want to limit that recommendation to "learn Java Postgres". I think Java developers might benefit from examining the benefits of a language like Haskell, Python programmers may benefit from a language with strong typing, such as C++/Rust/Go, that Unix lovers might learn a lot from examining the Windows NT kernel API's, and so on. If we examine the things that aren't close to us, the things with which we're the least familiar, that's when I believe the most fruitful learning can occur.
- flukus 10y ago
  I took the GP in a very figurative way as well. A lot of the learning being done at the moment though is simply framework churn, there are developers out their familiar with a million web and client side frameworks that would have been much better served learning SQL. Our apps would be better if we focused more and learning about usability and our users than on CSS compilers. As an industry I think we're under serving everyone right now, people have machines a thousand times more powerful than a couple of decades ago but what they can do with them is almost identical.

yummyfajitas 10y ago

Go didn't "introduce" CSP or actor like primitives. Scala had actors in 2006, I think Clojure has for a similar amount of time as well. There have been libraries for it in Java and C++ also since the early 2000's and probably earlier. Plenty of other people would say "I wonder how far along the industry would be if you people would actually learn how to manage your memory and write C". I don't see the industry gravitating towards bad re-implementations of C with less functionality and a flatter learning curve. The only "replacement" for C that I'm aware of is Rust, and Rust is most definitely not anti-intellectual in the same way I criticize Go. Rust actually requires the developer to learn new concepts (borrow checker) which are not found in C, Python, Java, etc. "why can't we abandon all our experimenting and learning and just stick to good old Java which obviously would solve all our problems", which is itself MASSIVELY anti-intellectual. I didn't say to end experiments. I said everyone should actually learn some fundamentals before jumping on low-learning curve bandwagons which offer nothing new.

geodel 10y ago
> Rust actually requires the developer to learn new concepts (borrow checker) Well they do not want GC for their language hence borrow checker while Go already has an excellent GC. As opposed to learning new things we need useful new things which couldn't be done before fancy new language.
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  So what can you do in Go that you couldn't do (without a lot more difficulty) in Java or Haskell?