6 ms·

Honest request - could you list the top benefits of modern languages people are giving up in favor of Go ?

kerkeslager 9y ago
Type checking, mainly. Lack of generics makes the type system fairly useless. Go generate works around the code duplication caused by no generics, but exacerbates the debugging problems. This is a tradeoff, increasing bugs and debugging time in exchange for faster compilation. I believe the developers when they say this makes sense in a 1 billion line codebase like Google's, but I've worked on 1 million line codebases and at that size debug time vastly outweighs compilation time in i.e. C#. I'm actually in a good passion to evaluate this because I worked in both C# and Java with and without Generics. Most codebases are far fewer than 1 million lines. There were other big problems with Go last time I checked, but I haven't looked at it much in a while, so I won't venture to say more since those things might have changed.
- Arzh 9y ago
  Generating the code leads to a lot easier debugging for me. In C++ debugging generics are annoying to put breakpoints in, since it is harder to hit the exact implementation I want (VS has a way to do this but it is a little annoying to get right). I don't mind doing that because all too often I've seen a 'generic' implementation gain more and more flags to make it less and less generic. I've only ever needed to do that a few times, the built in containers cover 95% of what I need. I came to go because I was formulating an opinion of c++, java, javascript etc and they aligned very closely to what the main team of three guys were talking about when they were first releasing it. Most of the time I never scale the application but I still love the way to solve problems in go, especially when I'm doing something in a concurrent manner. I've also had a large (5M+ lines) C++ project that would need to be complied 3-4 times to do things like CI and automated testing. So each build taking 1-1.5 hours, which is not crazy, because of rebuilding code that is static 99% of the time mean that it is worth it to me.
  - kerkeslager 9y ago
    It's 2017. C++ was invented in 1984. Just because a 33-year old language has problems doesn't mean Go is the best solution.
    - Arzh 9y ago
      I find that go is the best solution for my problems
  - rbehrends 9y ago
    C++ templates are a very idiosyncratic way of doing parametric polymorphism, and the C/C++ compilation model is even more idiosyncratic. You cannot make general statements about parametric polymorphism based on that.
    - Arzh 9y ago
      Everything I said was based on my experience with C++, I was making pointed statements not general ones.
  - yazr 9y ago
    Can you please comment on this code base ? Which tools / build chain r u using ? Did the actual compile take 1hr or the full CI/test ? Did u try use any parallelization ? I am curious because i am working on a "smart" parallelizer builder
    - Arzh 9y ago
      Yeah each build would take about an hour, 4-5 hours for the whole CI/test to get finished. It was crossed complied so there was an MSBuild and a gcc build. It was sone in serial since we didn't want to waste time building the release if the testing or QA builds failed.
- flashmob 9y ago
  Type system is pretty cool in go. Particularly how the interfaces work, you don't have to explicitly declare that your object /type implements an interface, it automatically figures it out. Lack of genetics makes the code easier to read. Much better with interfaces. Check this out http://blog.jonathanoliver.com/golang-has-generics/ http://blog.jonathanoliver.com/golang-has-generics/
  - rbehrends 9y ago
    > Check this out http://blog.jonathanoliver.com/golang-has-generics/ http://blog.jonathanoliver.com/golang-has-generics/ The author makes the common mistake of assuming that subtype polymorphism can be a full replacement for parametric polymorphism. It isn't, and neither is parametric polymorphism a replacement for subtype polymorphism.
  - kerkeslager 9y ago
    Duck typing is admittedly nice. The article you linked is deeply confused. He complains about a complicated generic type that he never encountered, and it's not clear if he's even used generics at all. He also says that if he needs to reuse something later he'll just implement an interface (huh?).
  - Silhouette 9y ago
    Check this out http://blog.jonathanoliver.com/golang-has-generics/ http://blog.jonathanoliver.com/golang-has-generics/ I'm afraid that's not a well-informed article. The assumption that the main use case for generics is collections is very limiting, for example. That might have been one of the original motivations, but today generic types are widely used for countless data structures and algorithms, and even modelling entire patterns of computation in languages like Haskell. They let you prove a lot more useful properties than just not inadvertently trying to pull a foo out of a set of bars.
  - puobelle 9y ago
    https://www.reddit.com/r/programmingcirclejerk/comments/6m7gpg/type_system_is_pretty_cool_in_go_particularly_how/ https://www.reddit.com/r/programmingcirclejerk/comments/6m7g...
di4na 9y ago
Memory isolation. Goroutines are really a poor man Actor. Error handling and control of the flow. Functions as first class citizens with real closure. Dynamic tracing. Etc etc
- curioustom 9y ago
  Thanks! Is there a language which mostly has those but also has some of the benefits of Go?
  - di4na 9y ago
    Erlang and Elixir and all languages on the BEAM. Haskell, Ocaml and Rust on recent linux kernel or on freeBSD/Illumos OS. But i do know what are the advantage of Go you want because i personally do not see a lot in it. Different pov i guess.

Type checking, mainly. Lack of generics makes the type system fairly useless. Go generate works around the code duplication caused by no generics, but exacerbates the debugging problems. This is a tradeoff, increasing bugs and debugging time in exchange for faster compilation. I believe the developers when they say this makes sense in a 1 billion line codebase like Google's, but I've worked on 1 million line codebases and at that size debug time vastly outweighs compilation time in i.e. C#. I'm actually in a good passion to evaluate this because I worked in both C# and Java with and without Generics. Most codebases are far fewer than 1 million lines. There were other big problems with Go last time I checked, but I haven't looked at it much in a while, so I won't venture to say more since those things might have changed.

Arzh 9y ago
Generating the code leads to a lot easier debugging for me. In C++ debugging generics are annoying to put breakpoints in, since it is harder to hit the exact implementation I want (VS has a way to do this but it is a little annoying to get right). I don't mind doing that because all too often I've seen a 'generic' implementation gain more and more flags to make it less and less generic. I've only ever needed to do that a few times, the built in containers cover 95% of what I need. I came to go because I was formulating an opinion of c++, java, javascript etc and they aligned very closely to what the main team of three guys were talking about when they were first releasing it. Most of the time I never scale the application but I still love the way to solve problems in go, especially when I'm doing something in a concurrent manner. I've also had a large (5M+ lines) C++ project that would need to be complied 3-4 times to do things like CI and automated testing. So each build taking 1-1.5 hours, which is not crazy, because of rebuilding code that is static 99% of the time mean that it is worth it to me.
- kerkeslager 9y ago
  It's 2017. C++ was invented in 1984. Just because a 33-year old language has problems doesn't mean Go is the best solution.
  - Arzh 9y ago
    I find that go is the best solution for my problems
- rbehrends 9y ago
  C++ templates are a very idiosyncratic way of doing parametric polymorphism, and the C/C++ compilation model is even more idiosyncratic. You cannot make general statements about parametric polymorphism based on that.
  - Arzh 9y ago
    Everything I said was based on my experience with C++, I was making pointed statements not general ones.
- yazr 9y ago
  Can you please comment on this code base ? Which tools / build chain r u using ? Did the actual compile take 1hr or the full CI/test ? Did u try use any parallelization ? I am curious because i am working on a "smart" parallelizer builder
  - Arzh 9y ago
    Yeah each build would take about an hour, 4-5 hours for the whole CI/test to get finished. It was crossed complied so there was an MSBuild and a gcc build. It was sone in serial since we didn't want to waste time building the release if the testing or QA builds failed.
flashmob 9y ago
Type system is pretty cool in go. Particularly how the interfaces work, you don't have to explicitly declare that your object /type implements an interface, it automatically figures it out. Lack of genetics makes the code easier to read. Much better with interfaces. Check this out http://blog.jonathanoliver.com/golang-has-generics/ http://blog.jonathanoliver.com/golang-has-generics/
- rbehrends 9y ago
  > Check this out http://blog.jonathanoliver.com/golang-has-generics/ http://blog.jonathanoliver.com/golang-has-generics/ The author makes the common mistake of assuming that subtype polymorphism can be a full replacement for parametric polymorphism. It isn't, and neither is parametric polymorphism a replacement for subtype polymorphism.
- kerkeslager 9y ago
  Duck typing is admittedly nice. The article you linked is deeply confused. He complains about a complicated generic type that he never encountered, and it's not clear if he's even used generics at all. He also says that if he needs to reuse something later he'll just implement an interface (huh?).
- Silhouette 9y ago
  Check this out http://blog.jonathanoliver.com/golang-has-generics/ http://blog.jonathanoliver.com/golang-has-generics/ I'm afraid that's not a well-informed article. The assumption that the main use case for generics is collections is very limiting, for example. That might have been one of the original motivations, but today generic types are widely used for countless data structures and algorithms, and even modelling entire patterns of computation in languages like Haskell. They let you prove a lot more useful properties than just not inadvertently trying to pull a foo out of a set of bars.
- puobelle 9y ago
  https://www.reddit.com/r/programmingcirclejerk/comments/6m7gpg/type_system_is_pretty_cool_in_go_particularly_how/ https://www.reddit.com/r/programmingcirclejerk/comments/6m7g...

di4na 9y ago

Memory isolation. Goroutines are really a poor man Actor. Error handling and control of the flow. Functions as first class citizens with real closure. Dynamic tracing. Etc etc

curioustom 9y ago
Thanks! Is there a language which mostly has those but also has some of the benefits of Go?
- di4na 9y ago
  Erlang and Elixir and all languages on the BEAM. Haskell, Ocaml and Rust on recent linux kernel or on freeBSD/Illumos OS. But i do know what are the advantage of Go you want because i personally do not see a lot in it. Different pov i guess.