5 ms·

Thinking Go is simple is considered harmful

17 points by tapirl 8y ago

myWindoonn 8y ago
Go had, last I manually counted, a whopping seventeen numeric types. That's a lot of complexity just in interpreting numeric literals!
- abiox 8y ago
  afaik the bulk of those are just related to sizing (16 bits, 32 bits, etc). it's not really that complex, and generally quite handy for a language like go.
- pythonistic 8y ago
  The underlying types are exposed to you, like C. Go isn't adding sugar to handling numeric types: it's not autoboxing to help you with conversions, and it's not hiding the implementation like a scripting language. I'll admit, it's a real pain when trying to convert from one type to another (e.g., in graphics programming, where I'm changing types from internal representations to what gets drawn to the screen). For most "job" programming, it was a non-issue and I felt secure in knowing what types, sizes, and representations I'm really using.
- icholy 8y ago
  Give me a break
- tapirl 8y ago
  I ever had many confusions in studying Go, but I never had any confusions on numeric literals. Go nmeric literals are intuitive and consistent with many other popular languages.
Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
Ugh. This is just a dumb ad for a dumb book. Go is a simple language, one of the simplest.
- nazka 8y ago
  I really want to use Go and I already know the language itself but this post[1] makes me scared to the point where a language as big as Scala makes more sense to me than learning a simple language but with a ton of things on the side to know. Is it really accurate compared to this post? I feel like I will have more to learn with Scala but at least it will be useful things. [1] http://devs.cloudimmunity.com/gotchas-and-common-mistakes-in-go-golang/ http://devs.cloudimmunity.com/gotchas-and-common-mistakes-in...
  - Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
    This post is too detailed. For many of these problems, no one is going to get "gotcha'd" by a problem which the compiler gives you a detailed error message for. Go is by no means flawless, but you usually face simple problems which might stump you for a moment but usually have easy and readily found solutions. Scala, on the other hand, is much harder to understand and much easier to write bad code in. I still don't know what the idiomatic way of doing many tasks in Scala is, the type model is nigh impossible to wrap your head around, the docs are scatterbrained and inconsistent, and I've spent way more time than I would like trying to get sbt in line.
  - tapirl 8y ago
    I'm so sorry if this article scares you. This is not the intention of this article. In fact, Go is a relative simpler language comparing to many other popular static languages. This article is intended to emphasize that you should NOT learn Go with the attitude by thinking Go is a very simple language.
- tapirl 8y ago
  I'm sorry, no offensive. Your feeling of the extent how you master Go is much like mine of the two years ago. BTW, this is a free online book. And the go101.org website doesn't embed any third-party advertisements and tracking code.
rhacker 8y ago
I have this overwhelming feeling Go will eventually take Java's spot in Tiobe, but it will likely take 10 years.
- tapirl 8y ago
  same feeling.
zerr 8y ago
Link to epub/mobi/pdf?
- tapirl 8y ago
  There will be eventually. currently, you can visit the go101.org website. The website is designed mobile friendly.
krylon 8y ago
Go is simple in the sense that there is very little "magic", i.e. very little code that executed that might not be obvious right away: No constructors, no destructors[0], no operator overloading, etc. This makes relatively easy to get a reasonably-accurate mental model of what is going on. Perhaps more importantly, its community has a culture that encourages simplicity of design, avoiding fancy tricks, etc. Using features like concurrency and interfaces in ways that are considered idiomatic is not exactly trivial, I think. But it's not that hard, either. At work, I have been using C# quite a bit lately, and while I think it is a well-designed language, it is far more complex than Go (cough async cough). I don't think what you are saying is wrong, but I think the title of the posting is easily misunderstood. [0] IIRC, one can ask for a "cleanup" function to be called when an object is about to be harvested by the garbage collector, but one has to do so explicity, and from what I have seen, it is not used commonly.
- tapirl 8y ago
  For the "cleanup", do you mean finalizers? The runtime.SetFanalizer was ever one of my confusions. https://go101.org/article/unofficial-faq.html#finalizers https://go101.org/article/unofficial-faq.html#finalizers
  - krylon 8y ago
    Yes, I was thinking of finalizers. To me, the main problem with them is that I have no control over when/if they get run. Fortunately, there is defer. ;-)

17 points by tapirl 8y ago

Go had, last I manually counted, a whopping seventeen numeric types. That's a lot of complexity just in interpreting numeric literals!

abiox 8y ago
afaik the bulk of those are just related to sizing (16 bits, 32 bits, etc). it's not really that complex, and generally quite handy for a language like go.
pythonistic 8y ago
The underlying types are exposed to you, like C. Go isn't adding sugar to handling numeric types: it's not autoboxing to help you with conversions, and it's not hiding the implementation like a scripting language. I'll admit, it's a real pain when trying to convert from one type to another (e.g., in graphics programming, where I'm changing types from internal representations to what gets drawn to the screen). For most "job" programming, it was a non-issue and I felt secure in knowing what types, sizes, and representations I'm really using.
icholy 8y ago
Give me a break
tapirl 8y ago
I ever had many confusions in studying Go, but I never had any confusions on numeric literals. Go nmeric literals are intuitive and consistent with many other popular languages.

Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago

Ugh. This is just a dumb ad for a dumb book. Go is a simple language, one of the simplest.

nazka 8y ago
I really want to use Go and I already know the language itself but this post[1] makes me scared to the point where a language as big as Scala makes more sense to me than learning a simple language but with a ton of things on the side to know. Is it really accurate compared to this post? I feel like I will have more to learn with Scala but at least it will be useful things. [1] http://devs.cloudimmunity.com/gotchas-and-common-mistakes-in-go-golang/ http://devs.cloudimmunity.com/gotchas-and-common-mistakes-in...
- Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
  This post is too detailed. For many of these problems, no one is going to get "gotcha'd" by a problem which the compiler gives you a detailed error message for. Go is by no means flawless, but you usually face simple problems which might stump you for a moment but usually have easy and readily found solutions. Scala, on the other hand, is much harder to understand and much easier to write bad code in. I still don't know what the idiomatic way of doing many tasks in Scala is, the type model is nigh impossible to wrap your head around, the docs are scatterbrained and inconsistent, and I've spent way more time than I would like trying to get sbt in line.
- tapirl 8y ago
  I'm so sorry if this article scares you. This is not the intention of this article. In fact, Go is a relative simpler language comparing to many other popular static languages. This article is intended to emphasize that you should NOT learn Go with the attitude by thinking Go is a very simple language.
tapirl 8y ago
I'm sorry, no offensive. Your feeling of the extent how you master Go is much like mine of the two years ago. BTW, this is a free online book. And the go101.org website doesn't embed any third-party advertisements and tracking code.

rhacker 8y ago

I have this overwhelming feeling Go will eventually take Java's spot in Tiobe, but it will likely take 10 years.

tapirl 8y ago
same feeling.

zerr 8y ago

Link to epub/mobi/pdf?

tapirl 8y ago
There will be eventually. currently, you can visit the go101.org website. The website is designed mobile friendly.

krylon 8y ago

Go is simple in the sense that there is very little "magic", i.e. very little code that executed that might not be obvious right away: No constructors, no destructors[0], no operator overloading, etc. This makes relatively easy to get a reasonably-accurate mental model of what is going on. Perhaps more importantly, its community has a culture that encourages simplicity of design, avoiding fancy tricks, etc. Using features like concurrency and interfaces in ways that are considered idiomatic is not exactly trivial, I think. But it's not that hard, either. At work, I have been using C# quite a bit lately, and while I think it is a well-designed language, it is far more complex than Go (cough async cough). I don't think what you are saying is wrong, but I think the title of the posting is easily misunderstood. [0] IIRC, one can ask for a "cleanup" function to be called when an object is about to be harvested by the garbage collector, but one has to do so explicity, and from what I have seen, it is not used commonly.

tapirl 8y ago
For the "cleanup", do you mean finalizers? The runtime.SetFanalizer was ever one of my confusions. https://go101.org/article/unofficial-faq.html#finalizers https://go101.org/article/unofficial-faq.html#finalizers
- krylon 8y ago
  Yes, I was thinking of finalizers. To me, the main problem with them is that I have no control over when/if they get run. Fortunately, there is defer. ;-)