4 ms·

Every major stable library uses a form of package management. Anyone pulling from master is a new go developer

wereHamster 8y ago
The fact that new go developers do that tells a lot about the state of documentation, tutorials, tooling etc. A language and its ecosystem should encourage best practices from the start. Not as some kind of late afterthought.
- yahyaheee 8y ago
  Yeah thats the problem they have been looking to solve for a couple years now, but for what its worth the https://github.com/golang/go/wiki https://github.com/golang/go/wiki has information on dep tooling. My experience is that most people don't read it. Any tutorial worth its salt will mention this as well. Go has made it possible to pull right from master on deps fairly easily so many new developers do that so they don't have to learn dependency management. Proper dependency management is a skill that must be learned in any language, and often separates an entry developer from a mid level one.
  - wereHamster 8y ago
    There are many languages that make it explicitly difficult to pull directly from master. Nodejs packages are near impossible to install directly from a repository, you always have to go through npmjs.com. Haskell too (before stack became widespread), but even now most people install packages from hackage/stackage, where packages are strongly versioned.
    - yahyaheee 8y ago
      This is where opinions will differ, I quite like go's ability to pull straight from a repository, and see outcomes like this as an unfortunate side effect of that feature. If a developer doesn't understand proper git and package versioning they will have a hard time in any language producing quality software. I'm not sure I want to give up the speed and ease of `go get` just to protect entry developers.
      - masklinn 8y ago
        > This is where opinions will differ, I quite like go's ability to pull straight from a repository Having the ability to do so does not mean it should be the easiest and simplest way to get from A to B. Both pip and cargo can pull from repositories, but it's not the default and it's basically not covered in any tutorial. It's easy to do, but a developer is unlikely to find the information before they're actively looking for it. > If a developer doesn't understand proper git and package versioning they will have a hard time in any language producing quality software. I don't understand why you're using Go if your teaching methodology is to throw live chainsaws at people and berate them for not understanding proper power tool safety, why are you not just cutting out the middleman and using C++?
        yahyaheee 8y ago
        :sigh: clearly you just don't like Go, which is fine. Of all the languages I've picked up Go was far and away the simplest and most productive, which is why I continue to use it. When I wrote python we were constantly using pip to pull from repos, so moving to Go I liked their repository centric view. Just because python recommends pip, doesn't mean junior devs don't totally botch dependency management with it. Dep management and git are core skills developers need to learn well to produce good software. There is simply no substitute for a bit of elbow grease on the matter. I'm not berating anyone, software is hard and being good at it means taking the time to learn some core tools.
        masklinn 8y ago
        > clearly you just don't like Go, which is fine. Well at least you're not trying to defend the indefensible, even if you refuse to be honest about it. > When I wrote python we were constantly using pip to pull from repos, so moving to Go I liked their repository centric view. That is a rather peculiar situation, I believe in the 15 years I've been using Python I've had one dependency (and a rather outdated one at that) I had to pull from a repository. > Just because python recommends pip, doesn't mean junior devs don't totally botch dependency management with it. Dep management and git are core skills developers need to learn well to produce good software. I obviously agree with that complete platitude, the question is whether you think people learn better and are more likely to do so if you trick them and lay down traps for them. And whether you think your amusement is worth some out entirely. > software is hard and being good at it means taking the time to learn some core tools. And how is making those core tools harder to use and more likely to be misuse conducive to that?
- weberc2 8y ago
  I disagree with your characterization. `go get` is the right tool for new developers (hell, I've been using Go for 7 years and I still use `go get` for the initial phase of my projects); they don't need reproducible builds, they need to install third party libraries and compile code. The current official reproducible build tooling in Go is vendoring, and that's quite unnecessarily painful for the things new developers need to do. Fortunately, Go 1.11 will be out soon with support for modules, so new developers can learn how to install code with the added bonus of not needing to learn a new set of tools down the road when they need to care about reproducibility.

The fact that new go developers do that tells a lot about the state of documentation, tutorials, tooling etc. A language and its ecosystem should encourage best practices from the start. Not as some kind of late afterthought.

yahyaheee 8y ago
Yeah thats the problem they have been looking to solve for a couple years now, but for what its worth the https://github.com/golang/go/wiki https://github.com/golang/go/wiki has information on dep tooling. My experience is that most people don't read it. Any tutorial worth its salt will mention this as well. Go has made it possible to pull right from master on deps fairly easily so many new developers do that so they don't have to learn dependency management. Proper dependency management is a skill that must be learned in any language, and often separates an entry developer from a mid level one.
- wereHamster 8y ago
  There are many languages that make it explicitly difficult to pull directly from master. Nodejs packages are near impossible to install directly from a repository, you always have to go through npmjs.com. Haskell too (before stack became widespread), but even now most people install packages from hackage/stackage, where packages are strongly versioned.
  - yahyaheee 8y ago
    This is where opinions will differ, I quite like go's ability to pull straight from a repository, and see outcomes like this as an unfortunate side effect of that feature. If a developer doesn't understand proper git and package versioning they will have a hard time in any language producing quality software. I'm not sure I want to give up the speed and ease of `go get` just to protect entry developers.
    - masklinn 8y ago
      > This is where opinions will differ, I quite like go's ability to pull straight from a repository Having the ability to do so does not mean it should be the easiest and simplest way to get from A to B. Both pip and cargo can pull from repositories, but it's not the default and it's basically not covered in any tutorial. It's easy to do, but a developer is unlikely to find the information before they're actively looking for it. > If a developer doesn't understand proper git and package versioning they will have a hard time in any language producing quality software. I don't understand why you're using Go if your teaching methodology is to throw live chainsaws at people and berate them for not understanding proper power tool safety, why are you not just cutting out the middleman and using C++?
      - yahyaheee 8y ago
        :sigh: clearly you just don't like Go, which is fine. Of all the languages I've picked up Go was far and away the simplest and most productive, which is why I continue to use it. When I wrote python we were constantly using pip to pull from repos, so moving to Go I liked their repository centric view. Just because python recommends pip, doesn't mean junior devs don't totally botch dependency management with it. Dep management and git are core skills developers need to learn well to produce good software. There is simply no substitute for a bit of elbow grease on the matter. I'm not berating anyone, software is hard and being good at it means taking the time to learn some core tools.
        masklinn 8y ago
        > clearly you just don't like Go, which is fine. Well at least you're not trying to defend the indefensible, even if you refuse to be honest about it. > When I wrote python we were constantly using pip to pull from repos, so moving to Go I liked their repository centric view. That is a rather peculiar situation, I believe in the 15 years I've been using Python I've had one dependency (and a rather outdated one at that) I had to pull from a repository. > Just because python recommends pip, doesn't mean junior devs don't totally botch dependency management with it. Dep management and git are core skills developers need to learn well to produce good software. I obviously agree with that complete platitude, the question is whether you think people learn better and are more likely to do so if you trick them and lay down traps for them. And whether you think your amusement is worth some out entirely. > software is hard and being good at it means taking the time to learn some core tools. And how is making those core tools harder to use and more likely to be misuse conducive to that?
weberc2 8y ago
I disagree with your characterization. `go get` is the right tool for new developers (hell, I've been using Go for 7 years and I still use `go get` for the initial phase of my projects); they don't need reproducible builds, they need to install third party libraries and compile code. The current official reproducible build tooling in Go is vendoring, and that's quite unnecessarily painful for the things new developers need to do. Fortunately, Go 1.11 will be out soon with support for modules, so new developers can learn how to install code with the added bonus of not needing to learn a new set of tools down the road when they need to care about reproducibility.