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When you talk about Go I think you should start with C. One of my professors used to tell us, that C was built by people who wanted to use it and didn't care a

by JepZ 10y ago

When you talk about Go I think you should start with C. One of my professors used to tell us, that C was built by people who wanted to use it and didn't care about academic style. In many ways Go is just the next step of C. C did not have object orientation and even passing functions around was kinda hard. While C++ tried to bring object orientation to C (total failure) Go decided to keep the core values of C and instead improved the rough features (e.g. easier binding of functions to structures, faster build times). By making it easier to pass around functions Go enables functional programming styles, but at its core, it is still just an improved C. The only revolution within Go (as a language) is the concurrency and channel concept and I think that was taken from some functional language (not sure). I really like Go, because it just feels right. It might not be as clean as Smalltalk or Lisp, but it has data structures and functions, teaches you how important interfaces are and lets you build highly concurrent applications with ease. In addition, it brings a nice set of tools which integrate well into a shell driven workflow. After all, the whole thing should not surprise anybody as Ken Thompson[1] was part of the Team which invented Go. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Thompson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Thompson

kem 10y ago
I wish people understood this better. I'm not a Go programmer, but I have a lot of respect for it. If you're wondering "why Go"? Think of it as a modern version of C, at a slightly higher level, developed by the same people for slightly higher-level tasks. They made C for low-level stuff, and then picked up with Go for higher-level stuff. It's like C+. C has been very successful in part because it's so simple in certain respects (although not in others) and I think Go will be successful for many of the same reasons. Go does what it does very well. I think Rust is actually a great choice for something like Tor, but I wouldn't use Rust for some of the things I'd use Go for.
- astrostl 10y ago
  > It's like C+ That's perfect.
pcwalton 10y ago
Go doesn't have faster build times than C. Rather, it has a de facto single implementation that's fast because it doesn't do the same level of optimization that modern C compilers do. The one improvement over C related to build time in Go is that you don't need include files. Granted, that's a big one. But modern C compilers make header parsing extremely fast.
psiclops 10y ago
Go's concurrency model is based on CSP [0] and the previous languages Rob Pike worked on that were also heavily influenced by CSP. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communicating_sequential_processes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communicating_sequential_proce...
solidsnack9000 10y ago
> I really like Go, because it just feels right. I think we've seen a few posts like that on HN and now I wonder, what that means exactly. What else falls under the "feels right" umbrella for you?
- JepZ 10y ago
  I am now sure if I can put it into words, but here are some comparisons: - In Scheme/Lisp, you write the function name before the opening parenthesis. In languages related to C, you write the function name before. For me, the second one feels better. In general, I like the C syntax pretty much. - In C++ you easily provoke very long compiler error messages. Go compiler messages are much shorter and much more to the point. I like the ones where I do not have to search the real error in the error messages themselves. (I heard Rust compiler error messages are even better). - To run a go program on a computer you just need the binary, done. To compile a program you need the compiler which comes with a few cli tools, done. For java, you have to decide if you need the JRE or JDK, agree to some license before being allowed to download it from their website. In addition, you have to place the jre on every computer which should run your program. I like the simple way. - When I design a program there are a few parts. One is the Entity Relationship Model. Sometimes I think about it as something that has to be saved to an SQL database, sometimes as an object oriented inheritance hierarchy. For both there are reasons, but even simpler is it to just think about it as a struct or JSON. This fits pretty good for designing JS and go apps. - When I write bash script I know what a slow language feels like. I know there are faster languages than go (e.g. fortran), but I am also aware that much of the performance is in the hand of the developer (e.g. memory management). When I write go programs I feel like my efforts to make the program efficient are worth my time and the tools support me while doing so. - Last but not least go supports then functional programming style when needed. I like that. Sometimes I miss object orientation a little, but that mostly happens when I forget what interfaces are for. And while I truly respect Alan Kay I think object orientation has been overused/misused enough, so that its ok for me, that go didn't build it into the language. So maybe I just like 'simple'. I am sure, that for every example I listed you can find a language which does even better than go, but I think it becomes harder when you consider all examples together. Nonetheless, the list is far from complete, I just tried to write down out of my head, what I like about go.

by JepZ 10y ago

kem 10y ago

I wish people understood this better. I'm not a Go programmer, but I have a lot of respect for it. If you're wondering "why Go"? Think of it as a modern version of C, at a slightly higher level, developed by the same people for slightly higher-level tasks. They made C for low-level stuff, and then picked up with Go for higher-level stuff. It's like C+. C has been very successful in part because it's so simple in certain respects (although not in others) and I think Go will be successful for many of the same reasons. Go does what it does very well. I think Rust is actually a great choice for something like Tor, but I wouldn't use Rust for some of the things I'd use Go for.

astrostl 10y ago
> It's like C+ That's perfect.

pcwalton 10y ago

Go doesn't have faster build times than C. Rather, it has a de facto single implementation that's fast because it doesn't do the same level of optimization that modern C compilers do. The one improvement over C related to build time in Go is that you don't need include files. Granted, that's a big one. But modern C compilers make header parsing extremely fast.

psiclops 10y ago

Go's concurrency model is based on CSP [0] and the previous languages Rob Pike worked on that were also heavily influenced by CSP. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communicating_sequential_processes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communicating_sequential_proce...

solidsnack9000 10y ago

> I really like Go, because it just feels right. I think we've seen a few posts like that on HN and now I wonder, what that means exactly. What else falls under the "feels right" umbrella for you?

JepZ 10y ago
I am now sure if I can put it into words, but here are some comparisons: - In Scheme/Lisp, you write the function name before the opening parenthesis. In languages related to C, you write the function name before. For me, the second one feels better. In general, I like the C syntax pretty much. - In C++ you easily provoke very long compiler error messages. Go compiler messages are much shorter and much more to the point. I like the ones where I do not have to search the real error in the error messages themselves. (I heard Rust compiler error messages are even better). - To run a go program on a computer you just need the binary, done. To compile a program you need the compiler which comes with a few cli tools, done. For java, you have to decide if you need the JRE or JDK, agree to some license before being allowed to download it from their website. In addition, you have to place the jre on every computer which should run your program. I like the simple way. - When I design a program there are a few parts. One is the Entity Relationship Model. Sometimes I think about it as something that has to be saved to an SQL database, sometimes as an object oriented inheritance hierarchy. For both there are reasons, but even simpler is it to just think about it as a struct or JSON. This fits pretty good for designing JS and go apps. - When I write bash script I know what a slow language feels like. I know there are faster languages than go (e.g. fortran), but I am also aware that much of the performance is in the hand of the developer (e.g. memory management). When I write go programs I feel like my efforts to make the program efficient are worth my time and the tools support me while doing so. - Last but not least go supports then functional programming style when needed. I like that. Sometimes I miss object orientation a little, but that mostly happens when I forget what interfaces are for. And while I truly respect Alan Kay I think object orientation has been overused/misused enough, so that its ok for me, that go didn't build it into the language. So maybe I just like 'simple'. I am sure, that for every example I listed you can find a language which does even better than go, but I think it becomes harder when you consider all examples together. Nonetheless, the list is far from complete, I just tried to write down out of my head, what I like about go.