4 ms·

There's a pretty similar discussion happening downthread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16169803 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16169803 The shor

There's a pretty similar discussion happening downthread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16169803 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16169803 The short version is that I don't think it's fair to compare Go's stability to that of a "barebones" language with an infinitesimal stdlib (e.g., C), because that's where most of the change is likely to happen. Go's already proven to be far more stable than most "batteries included" languages: think Python 2 vs. 3, Ruby's fairly considerable churn over the years, PHP 4 to 5, etc. Obviously my designation on Go here is subjective, but it seems to me that it compares favorable to any other platform that comes to mind.

klodolph 9y ago
I would say that Java is the only similar platform in terms of API stability. Even Java had some breaking changes, but they were relatively minor and relatively early (e.g. assert). Before .NET core, C# was a bit of a mess, I remember switching an app to PCL and it broke damn near everything. That was only four years ago.
fnl 9y ago
Python 3 is older than Go, and PHP 5 is even older than either, at least as for Go version 1. C++ is fully backwards compatible, as is Java. I don't see this point. And, we'd first need to see if a hypothetical Go 2 will be backwards compatible, anyways.
- mathw 9y ago
  C++ is only backwards compatible within the standardised versions. Before then, the library story was particularly unpleasant. Try building something written before C++98 on a modern compiler... Of course, C++98 was 20 years ago so that's probably okay!
  - fnl 9y ago
    Good point - there we have our margin for exceptional language stability: ~20 years, set by both Java and C++. I guess Go v1 still needs a few more years to even be half that old... :-)
slaymaker1907 9y ago
I think the point people are trying to make is that even your supposed unstable examples such as python don't do big, breaking changes on small time scales. python was originally created in 1991, python 2 came out in 2000, and python 3 came out in 2008. Even if we assume that python was only stable after the release of python3, it has been pretty stable for about a decade whereas Golang has NOT EVEN EXISTED for that long.
- inlined 9y ago
  Eh. Close enough. Go is 9yrs old. I don't think the difference in 9 and 10 years deserves all caps.

klodolph 9y ago

I would say that Java is the only similar platform in terms of API stability. Even Java had some breaking changes, but they were relatively minor and relatively early (e.g. assert). Before .NET core, C# was a bit of a mess, I remember switching an app to PCL and it broke damn near everything. That was only four years ago.

fnl 9y ago

Python 3 is older than Go, and PHP 5 is even older than either, at least as for Go version 1. C++ is fully backwards compatible, as is Java. I don't see this point. And, we'd first need to see if a hypothetical Go 2 will be backwards compatible, anyways.

mathw 9y ago
C++ is only backwards compatible within the standardised versions. Before then, the library story was particularly unpleasant. Try building something written before C++98 on a modern compiler... Of course, C++98 was 20 years ago so that's probably okay!
- fnl 9y ago
  Good point - there we have our margin for exceptional language stability: ~20 years, set by both Java and C++. I guess Go v1 still needs a few more years to even be half that old... :-)

slaymaker1907 9y ago

I think the point people are trying to make is that even your supposed unstable examples such as python don't do big, breaking changes on small time scales. python was originally created in 1991, python 2 came out in 2000, and python 3 came out in 2008. Even if we assume that python was only stable after the release of python3, it has been pretty stable for about a decade whereas Golang has NOT EVEN EXISTED for that long.

inlined 9y ago
Eh. Close enough. Go is 9yrs old. I don't think the difference in 9 and 10 years deserves all caps.