5 ms·

Real Go Projects: SmartTwitter and web.go

80 points by pufuwozu 16y ago

ed 16y ago
I've been thoroughly impressed watching web.go come together. It's now the top Go project on Github in every category they track: http://github.com/languages/Go http://github.com/languages/Go Personally I'm of the opinion that language expressiveness matters more than real world performance, but only to a limit. Go is definitely carving out a nice niche for performant systems-related apps. And the fact that Smart Twitter serves 90k concurrent users from a VPS without breaking a sweat is freaking amazing. I suspect this is the reason the service can remain free. (edit: err, for the "watched" categories)
- SkyMarshal 16y ago
  I imagine at some point Google will make Go their fourth official language, when they perceive it is mature enough. I do hope they'll add a Go version of App Engine, as well.
  - syllogism 16y ago
    It's Go on Android that I want...
    - kaib 16y ago
      It's getting there. Ken and Russ have been fixing a lot of the bugs I left behind in the arm compiler and it is passing most of the tests now. There is still work needed to get the API ported/linked but at least there is should be closure on the compiler front.
      - enneff 16y ago
        There's also quite a bit of interest from some of the Android guys internally, so I'm optimistic it'll continue to grow in that direction.
      - jbarham 16y ago
        For those who don't know, "Ken" is Ken Thompson himself.
- stcredzero 16y ago
  If they would retarget Go to a VM with advanced debugging, then it could subsume a lot of the advantages of languages like Python/Ruby/Smalltalk. Not only do those languages have fast turnaround times due to their dynamic nature, they also have "debugger on steroids" facilities like iPython, irb, and the Smalltalk image. If Go could replicate that facet as well, then dynamic environments wouldn't do anything significantly better than Go.
- binomial 16y ago
  I just wanted to point out that it's not 90k concurrent users, but 90k total users (for some unknown definition of "user"). But it does process a couple dozen tweets per second according to him, with low load. That's quite a far ways off from 90k concurrent users. That's not to say that Go wouldn't help in that case, it really depends on what the application is doing.
enneff 16y ago
Gotta thank Hoisie for writing this. Nice shout out to HN. :-)
- marketer 16y ago
  Thanks for the post :)
kuber 16y ago
awesome!
kuber 16y ago
awesome!
qhoxie 16y ago
Well done marketer. Glad to see this getting some more publicity.
swannodette 16y ago
What do people find interesting about Go? It's barely faster than the best dynamic languages - http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=go&lang2=racket http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/benchmark.php?test=all..., and it offers few conceptual innovations (in comparison to say Racket, Scala, Haskell, hell, even JavaScript). So it seems too slow for systems programming and too "blind-folders on" about where CS is going. I'm honestly curious, what are people actually excited about? The only scenario I could see people using it is in the situation where speed is not of the essence but memory consumption is. Perhaps I'm naive and this is a bigger category of software than I'm aware of.
- Raphael_Amiard 16y ago
  The thing is you are actually comparing mature dynamic languages implementation to a very new static language implementation. In the long term, if any of the previous events in the matter are of any importance, Go is very likely to climb that list without much effort. That's just the reality of compiler optimization : It's much more easier to do for a static language. On a related note, you sound very "dynamic language" centric. Some people actually like static typing, and i won't relaunch the debate here but both sides have pretty good argument, especially when you throw type inference into the mix. In the static camp, here is a few advantages i can see to go (i'm not actually an user of the language) : - Easier to get your head around than Ocaml/Haskell - Arguably better than java (pros: actually has proper closures, and a sane system for polymorphism. cons: no generics) - Compiles to machine code rather than byte-code, so doesn't depend on a VM. Can be important for some tasks. I actually think Go has quite a lot going on for it. It just doesn't have any 'wow' factor. But that's not necessarily a bad thing
  - acqq 16y ago
    > so doesn't depend on a VM But "dependence" on VM is nothing tragic if the GC is not in the game. If you'd imagine a VM without GC then what remains is just the potential for run-time JIT and optimization which can actually be a good thing! There's a long history of p-code interpreters which provided the more compact code, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UCSD_Pascal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UCSD_Pascal and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_P-Code http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_P-Code At that time tracing and JIT would have been too heavy thing to do but today it could maybe be interesting to have something like that. And as far as I know, Go doesn't "depend" on VM but does on GC, but D also generates the native code but doesn't have to use GC and I think that is an important advantage for such a kind of the language.
aditya 16y ago
Nice, this made it to TechCrunch via HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1816945 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1816945

80 points by pufuwozu 16y ago

ed 16y ago

I've been thoroughly impressed watching web.go come together. It's now the top Go project on Github in every category they track: http://github.com/languages/Go http://github.com/languages/Go Personally I'm of the opinion that language expressiveness matters more than real world performance, but only to a limit. Go is definitely carving out a nice niche for performant systems-related apps. And the fact that Smart Twitter serves 90k concurrent users from a VPS without breaking a sweat is freaking amazing. I suspect this is the reason the service can remain free. (edit: err, for the "watched" categories)

SkyMarshal 16y ago
I imagine at some point Google will make Go their fourth official language, when they perceive it is mature enough. I do hope they'll add a Go version of App Engine, as well.
- syllogism 16y ago
  It's Go on Android that I want...
  - kaib 16y ago
    It's getting there. Ken and Russ have been fixing a lot of the bugs I left behind in the arm compiler and it is passing most of the tests now. There is still work needed to get the API ported/linked but at least there is should be closure on the compiler front.
    - enneff 16y ago
      There's also quite a bit of interest from some of the Android guys internally, so I'm optimistic it'll continue to grow in that direction.
    - jbarham 16y ago
      For those who don't know, "Ken" is Ken Thompson himself.
stcredzero 16y ago
If they would retarget Go to a VM with advanced debugging, then it could subsume a lot of the advantages of languages like Python/Ruby/Smalltalk. Not only do those languages have fast turnaround times due to their dynamic nature, they also have "debugger on steroids" facilities like iPython, irb, and the Smalltalk image. If Go could replicate that facet as well, then dynamic environments wouldn't do anything significantly better than Go.
binomial 16y ago
I just wanted to point out that it's not 90k concurrent users, but 90k total users (for some unknown definition of "user"). But it does process a couple dozen tweets per second according to him, with low load. That's quite a far ways off from 90k concurrent users. That's not to say that Go wouldn't help in that case, it really depends on what the application is doing.

enneff 16y ago

Gotta thank Hoisie for writing this. Nice shout out to HN. :-)

marketer 16y ago
Thanks for the post :)

kuber 16y ago

awesome!

kuber 16y ago

awesome!

qhoxie 16y ago

Well done marketer. Glad to see this getting some more publicity.

swannodette 16y ago

What do people find interesting about Go? It's barely faster than the best dynamic languages - http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=go&lang2=racket http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/benchmark.php?test=all..., and it offers few conceptual innovations (in comparison to say Racket, Scala, Haskell, hell, even JavaScript). So it seems too slow for systems programming and too "blind-folders on" about where CS is going. I'm honestly curious, what are people actually excited about? The only scenario I could see people using it is in the situation where speed is not of the essence but memory consumption is. Perhaps I'm naive and this is a bigger category of software than I'm aware of.

Raphael_Amiard 16y ago
The thing is you are actually comparing mature dynamic languages implementation to a very new static language implementation. In the long term, if any of the previous events in the matter are of any importance, Go is very likely to climb that list without much effort. That's just the reality of compiler optimization : It's much more easier to do for a static language. On a related note, you sound very "dynamic language" centric. Some people actually like static typing, and i won't relaunch the debate here but both sides have pretty good argument, especially when you throw type inference into the mix. In the static camp, here is a few advantages i can see to go (i'm not actually an user of the language) : - Easier to get your head around than Ocaml/Haskell - Arguably better than java (pros: actually has proper closures, and a sane system for polymorphism. cons: no generics) - Compiles to machine code rather than byte-code, so doesn't depend on a VM. Can be important for some tasks. I actually think Go has quite a lot going on for it. It just doesn't have any 'wow' factor. But that's not necessarily a bad thing
- acqq 16y ago
  > so doesn't depend on a VM But "dependence" on VM is nothing tragic if the GC is not in the game. If you'd imagine a VM without GC then what remains is just the potential for run-time JIT and optimization which can actually be a good thing! There's a long history of p-code interpreters which provided the more compact code, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UCSD_Pascal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UCSD_Pascal and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_P-Code http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_P-Code At that time tracing and JIT would have been too heavy thing to do but today it could maybe be interesting to have something like that. And as far as I know, Go doesn't "depend" on VM but does on GC, but D also generates the native code but doesn't have to use GC and I think that is an important advantage for such a kind of the language.

aditya 16y ago

Nice, this made it to TechCrunch via HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1816945 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1816945