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Go is an alternative for C (for services), PHP, and server-side JS. I don't understand why people keep comparing it to languages like C++, C#, D, Java, Rust, or

by fnl 9y ago

Go is an alternative for C (for services), PHP, and server-side JS. I don't understand why people keep comparing it to languages like C++, C#, D, Java, Rust, or Scala. The problems these two sets of languages solve are fundamentally different.

fauigerzigerk 9y ago
>The problems these two sets of languages solve are fundamentally different. I'm afraid I fail this intelligence test. What problems are solved by C, Go, PHP and server-side JS but not by any of Java, C++, C#, D, Rust or Scala (and vice versa)? This seems like a completely arbitrary classification to me.
- fnl 9y ago
  Sorry, I had thought that it was quite obvious: JS, PHP, and Go are almost exclusively used for web-related tasks. Yes, one can find other usage examples, but by and large, that's their main field of application. To expand on this, imagine building some complex application framework with these web-oriented languages. Without decent abstractions and insufficient typed programming support (see e.g. TypeScript to JS transpiling, or writing your own preprocessor macros to simulate generics in Go to avoid having interface{} everywhere, etc), and certainly no support for annotations, macros and other meta-programming techniques. Yes, not all of that high-level stuff is great and takes time to master, and so I understand the niche of Go & PHP & ss-JS: You need to quickly scale up your web services startup, which is often poorly paid work, and so you can't afford experienced developers. Having a simple, common, easy web services development language where you can hire any freshman and get them productive is great. So I'm not saying Go is bad or useless, but it only fits a (big - even, possibly the biggest in software engineering) specific case. ASP, PHP and Node.JS et al. are horrible compared to Go at that, but were the options you had before Go came along, so it's a godsend for web developers. I hope that explains why I don't see Go as comparable to complex, high-level languages - and in no way in competition with them, in fact.
  - fauigerzigerk 9y ago
    PHP does indeed have features that make it more suitable for writing server side page templates, and JavaScript has a unique position in client side web development. But I see very little in terms of features or problems they solve that distinguishes Java, JavaScript, Go, Scala and C# from each other when it comes to writing Web backends. It's essentially a cultural choice. So comparing them (and many others) is totally fair game in my opinion.
    - fnl 9y ago
      > I see very little in terms of features or problems they solve that distinguishes Java, JavaScript, Go, Scala and C# from each other when it comes to writing Web backends. So in a way, we agree, as that was my whole point - Go & it's predecessors (ASP, PHP, JS, ...) are mostly only good for Web backends: E.g., literally all Go developers I know personally are either fresh out of college or ex PHP programmers, ASPers and JS hackers, and all work exclusively on web development stuff. (But my sample size is maybe a dozen companies, so that's possibly biased, I agree.)
      - fauigerzigerk 9y ago
        What I disagree with first and foremost is your claim that Go is not an alternative for JVM/.NET languages and hence shouldn't be compared to them. All of these languages are direct competitors in a number of areas today (Web backends, infrastructure services, database systems) and based on language/runtime capabilities (as opposed to cultural and library availability) I see almost no area where there is no potential overlap in the future. Also, what a language is currently used for and what it is good for are two completely different things. There was a time when Java was mostly used for Applets and desktop user interfaces. It wasn't good at either.
        fnl 9y ago
        For the sake of argument, let's assume Go were equal to Java and C# (nb, I think that is not true, but let's look at the issue from that perspective). Can Go replace C#? That's MS land and comes with the .Net platform. I think nobody will think Go is even remotely gathering its following from C# and the amount of tooling you get there is probably the largest set you can get. What about Java? That has 20 years of entrenched Enterprise usage. So to make a dent on that, it not only has to have equal languages facilities, it also needs an equivalent ecosystem (maybe?) and, crucially, has to be better: Java replaced C++ as it's a much better fit at what it's used for due to GC and "no" resource management. But I certainly don't see anything that Go does that makes it much better over Java as Java was in it's day over C++. So no, I don't see Go replacing .Net or the JVM anytime soon.
- fnl 9y ago
  Here is an even better way of putting this; I believe Go hasn't been used for any of these areas: game engines; scientific simulations; military usages; planning, logistics and operations; space exploration; embedded systems and industrial software; robotics; etc. etc. etc. Go is great for one thing, mainly: highly concurrent problems with large 99th percentile latency permissions, which mostly means web development - and that is "coincidentally" something Google is interested in, too.
  - fauigerzigerk 9y ago
    You keep mixing up what languages are currently used for and what they are suitable for. There are very few projects for which you couldn't use Go, JVM and .NET languages equally well purely on the basis of language and runtime features (ignoring hiring, library availability and other cultural aspects)
    - kuschku 9y ago
      The entire category of "you need non-standard datastructures" works perfectly well on the JVM and .NET CLR, but is entirely useless in Go (thanks to missing generics).
      - fauigerzigerk 9y ago
        Of course you can write non-standard data structures in Go. The fact that Go makes this more inconvenient or less efficient than languages that have generics is exactly why we compare the languages, not a reason for not comparing them as fnl has suggested.
        fnl 9y ago
        It is always possible to compare any two things. The real question is if there's something interesting to learn. We learned that the goroutines & channels concept isn't that bad an idea, but that it doesn't prevent you from stumbling over weird race conditions in large, distributed systems. Beyond that, at best one might argue if the lack of nearly all advanced programming features in Go is in itself a feature or a shortcoming. However, I think that depends more on your personal preference on programming styles, so there's not much more to be learned from arguing about that. So that is why I see there's little that can be learned from any such comparison beyond what's well known already.

by fnl 9y ago

fauigerzigerk 9y ago

>The problems these two sets of languages solve are fundamentally different. I'm afraid I fail this intelligence test. What problems are solved by C, Go, PHP and server-side JS but not by any of Java, C++, C#, D, Rust or Scala (and vice versa)? This seems like a completely arbitrary classification to me.

fnl 9y ago
Sorry, I had thought that it was quite obvious: JS, PHP, and Go are almost exclusively used for web-related tasks. Yes, one can find other usage examples, but by and large, that's their main field of application. To expand on this, imagine building some complex application framework with these web-oriented languages. Without decent abstractions and insufficient typed programming support (see e.g. TypeScript to JS transpiling, or writing your own preprocessor macros to simulate generics in Go to avoid having interface{} everywhere, etc), and certainly no support for annotations, macros and other meta-programming techniques. Yes, not all of that high-level stuff is great and takes time to master, and so I understand the niche of Go & PHP & ss-JS: You need to quickly scale up your web services startup, which is often poorly paid work, and so you can't afford experienced developers. Having a simple, common, easy web services development language where you can hire any freshman and get them productive is great. So I'm not saying Go is bad or useless, but it only fits a (big - even, possibly the biggest in software engineering) specific case. ASP, PHP and Node.JS et al. are horrible compared to Go at that, but were the options you had before Go came along, so it's a godsend for web developers. I hope that explains why I don't see Go as comparable to complex, high-level languages - and in no way in competition with them, in fact.
- fauigerzigerk 9y ago
  PHP does indeed have features that make it more suitable for writing server side page templates, and JavaScript has a unique position in client side web development. But I see very little in terms of features or problems they solve that distinguishes Java, JavaScript, Go, Scala and C# from each other when it comes to writing Web backends. It's essentially a cultural choice. So comparing them (and many others) is totally fair game in my opinion.
  - fnl 9y ago
    > I see very little in terms of features or problems they solve that distinguishes Java, JavaScript, Go, Scala and C# from each other when it comes to writing Web backends. So in a way, we agree, as that was my whole point - Go & it's predecessors (ASP, PHP, JS, ...) are mostly only good for Web backends: E.g., literally all Go developers I know personally are either fresh out of college or ex PHP programmers, ASPers and JS hackers, and all work exclusively on web development stuff. (But my sample size is maybe a dozen companies, so that's possibly biased, I agree.)
    - fauigerzigerk 9y ago
      What I disagree with first and foremost is your claim that Go is not an alternative for JVM/.NET languages and hence shouldn't be compared to them. All of these languages are direct competitors in a number of areas today (Web backends, infrastructure services, database systems) and based on language/runtime capabilities (as opposed to cultural and library availability) I see almost no area where there is no potential overlap in the future. Also, what a language is currently used for and what it is good for are two completely different things. There was a time when Java was mostly used for Applets and desktop user interfaces. It wasn't good at either.
      - fnl 9y ago
        For the sake of argument, let's assume Go were equal to Java and C# (nb, I think that is not true, but let's look at the issue from that perspective). Can Go replace C#? That's MS land and comes with the .Net platform. I think nobody will think Go is even remotely gathering its following from C# and the amount of tooling you get there is probably the largest set you can get. What about Java? That has 20 years of entrenched Enterprise usage. So to make a dent on that, it not only has to have equal languages facilities, it also needs an equivalent ecosystem (maybe?) and, crucially, has to be better: Java replaced C++ as it's a much better fit at what it's used for due to GC and "no" resource management. But I certainly don't see anything that Go does that makes it much better over Java as Java was in it's day over C++. So no, I don't see Go replacing .Net or the JVM anytime soon.
fnl 9y ago
Here is an even better way of putting this; I believe Go hasn't been used for any of these areas: game engines; scientific simulations; military usages; planning, logistics and operations; space exploration; embedded systems and industrial software; robotics; etc. etc. etc. Go is great for one thing, mainly: highly concurrent problems with large 99th percentile latency permissions, which mostly means web development - and that is "coincidentally" something Google is interested in, too.
- fauigerzigerk 9y ago
  You keep mixing up what languages are currently used for and what they are suitable for. There are very few projects for which you couldn't use Go, JVM and .NET languages equally well purely on the basis of language and runtime features (ignoring hiring, library availability and other cultural aspects)
  - kuschku 9y ago
    The entire category of "you need non-standard datastructures" works perfectly well on the JVM and .NET CLR, but is entirely useless in Go (thanks to missing generics).
    - fauigerzigerk 9y ago
      Of course you can write non-standard data structures in Go. The fact that Go makes this more inconvenient or less efficient than languages that have generics is exactly why we compare the languages, not a reason for not comparing them as fnl has suggested.
      - fnl 9y ago
        It is always possible to compare any two things. The real question is if there's something interesting to learn. We learned that the goroutines & channels concept isn't that bad an idea, but that it doesn't prevent you from stumbling over weird race conditions in large, distributed systems. Beyond that, at best one might argue if the lack of nearly all advanced programming features in Go is in itself a feature or a shortcoming. However, I think that depends more on your personal preference on programming styles, so there's not much more to be learned from arguing about that. So that is why I see there's little that can be learned from any such comparison beyond what's well known already.