4 ms·

I continue to be surprised by this argument. It seems to only matter if your job is to learn one language per week. I don't need to get up to speed in a weeken

I continue to be surprised by this argument. It seems to only matter if your job is to learn one language per week. I don't need to get up to speed in a weekend. It's the speed that I'm getting up to that matters. Of course there is a limit to this principle, I grant you that. What matters as well is how readable other people's code is, or even my own code after not touching it for a year. And I mean readable for someone as proficient in the language as the original author. This aspect sometimes seems underappreciated by proponents of "powerful/expressive" languages.

christophilus 10y ago
I think what you are saying is that the readability of a language is more important than how easy a language is to learn. I heartily agree. Languages that encourage simple, readable code trump pretty much any other language out there, in my opinion. I can't tell you how many times I've looked at my overly abstract Ruby code and just thought, WTF?! I like Go for this reason. It has more noise (err) than I'd like, but when I look at most Go code, I find it relatively easy to follow and modify. There's no other language I've used that achieves this so consistently.
jjuel 10y ago
That is the beauty of gofmt in my opinion. You can pretty much guarantee that your code will be almost the same style as someone else's code. Which in turn increases readability down the line for someone who knows the language.
weberc2 10y ago
Learning curve is important because it means you can bring a new team member up to speed quickly--you don't need to find Go developers, you can make them. The learning investment will pay dividends very quickly. Also, Go can be mastered in 1-3 months, whereas other languages take years. Being able to quickly (i.e., cheaply) produce experts in the language seems advantageous.

4 ms·

I continue to be surprised by this argument. It seems to only matter if your job is to learn one language per week. I don't need to get up to speed in a weeken

by fauigerzigerk 10y ago

christophilus 10y ago
I think what you are saying is that the readability of a language is more important than how easy a language is to learn. I heartily agree. Languages that encourage simple, readable code trump pretty much any other language out there, in my opinion. I can't tell you how many times I've looked at my overly abstract Ruby code and just thought, WTF?! I like Go for this reason. It has more noise (err) than I'd like, but when I look at most Go code, I find it relatively easy to follow and modify. There's no other language I've used that achieves this so consistently.
jjuel 10y ago
That is the beauty of gofmt in my opinion. You can pretty much guarantee that your code will be almost the same style as someone else's code. Which in turn increases readability down the line for someone who knows the language.
weberc2 10y ago
Learning curve is important because it means you can bring a new team member up to speed quickly--you don't need to find Go developers, you can make them. The learning investment will pay dividends very quickly. Also, Go can be mastered in 1-3 months, whereas other languages take years. Being able to quickly (i.e., cheaply) produce experts in the language seems advantageous.