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Go is legit and a huge threat to java and other languages. My entire career has mostly been java based for the backend. The last few months all I’ve been writin

Go is legit and a huge threat to java and other languages. My entire career has mostly been java based for the backend. The last few months all I’ve been writing is go. I’m finding libraries in Go that I can’t find in Java. I’m seeing lots of new tech all written in go. Go has all the momentum at this point.

erik_seaberg 8y ago
You could edit JVM bytecode by hand, but nobody wants to, we have tools for that. I'm sorely tempted to make a language that transpiles to/from all the Go boilerplate that shouldn't concern human beings.
- ronnier 8y ago
  Can you give me examples of what you mean? I agree some of it is low level, verbose even, but on the other hand, I'm able to figure things out on new projects rather easy, there's just fewer layers and magic things happening.
- JulianMorrison 8y ago
  Some of the boilerplate is likely to go away in new versions. (See new "check" syntax.) But the hidden advantage of Go has always been the ability to look at a function and just see what it does. That comes at the expense of boilerplate, but is worth it.
  - erik_seaberg 8y ago
    Whenever I look at some Go, it seems the "what it does" is buried in a big pile of mechanics that could have been generated. You're more likely to see half a dozen error-prone lines copying between slices than an obvious HOF named "filter".
Apocryphon 8y ago
Wouldn't Kotlin or Dart be a better replacement for Java?
- JulianMorrison 8y ago
  Go isn't just a replacement for Java, it's a step off the entire JVM and out of the ecosystem of heavyweight "enterprise" frameworks.
  - repolfx 8y ago
    Go is heavyweight: its runtime doubles your memory usage and gives you an incredibly slow garbage collector, it also gets fast compile times partly by not optimising much. Source-wise it has a boilerplate problem practically as bad as Java's just in different ways. Meanwhile there are lots of frameworks in the JVM world, some of them "heavy" with features, but if you want frameworks that are much smaller, github is overflowing with them. Kotlin eliminates most of the boilerplate, leaving you with a slimline language, a powerful runtime and a wide choice of libraries. Go doesn't have much to compete with that.
JulianMorrison 8y ago
My feeling is that they'll exist alongside each other in not very overlapping niches. Java is what you write in, if what you're selling isn't the code but some service that the code provides, and you aren't a startup, and you can afford a support team and want a lot of devs. Go is what you write in when you're selling the thing you made directly, like say it's a DB engine, or you're a startup and want low effort support and only want a few devs.
- chii 8y ago
  I imagine java is what a company would choose if they have a massive budget, but is unwilling to hire cowboy coders. Java makes maintaining a feature easy, and the programmers hired can be average and still be able to make something of acceptable quality, in an acceptable timeframe. A startup rather wants to move fast. Java is harder to move fast at - but Go probably has that in spades. I do believe Go will not succeed in a large, beaurocratic place. And as a start up grow out to become more and more beaurocratic, the tech transitions with it.

erik_seaberg 8y ago

You could edit JVM bytecode by hand, but nobody wants to, we have tools for that. I'm sorely tempted to make a language that transpiles to/from all the Go boilerplate that shouldn't concern human beings.

ronnier 8y ago
Can you give me examples of what you mean? I agree some of it is low level, verbose even, but on the other hand, I'm able to figure things out on new projects rather easy, there's just fewer layers and magic things happening.
JulianMorrison 8y ago
Some of the boilerplate is likely to go away in new versions. (See new "check" syntax.) But the hidden advantage of Go has always been the ability to look at a function and just see what it does. That comes at the expense of boilerplate, but is worth it.
- erik_seaberg 8y ago
  Whenever I look at some Go, it seems the "what it does" is buried in a big pile of mechanics that could have been generated. You're more likely to see half a dozen error-prone lines copying between slices than an obvious HOF named "filter".

Apocryphon 8y ago

Wouldn't Kotlin or Dart be a better replacement for Java?

JulianMorrison 8y ago
Go isn't just a replacement for Java, it's a step off the entire JVM and out of the ecosystem of heavyweight "enterprise" frameworks.
- repolfx 8y ago
  Go is heavyweight: its runtime doubles your memory usage and gives you an incredibly slow garbage collector, it also gets fast compile times partly by not optimising much. Source-wise it has a boilerplate problem practically as bad as Java's just in different ways. Meanwhile there are lots of frameworks in the JVM world, some of them "heavy" with features, but if you want frameworks that are much smaller, github is overflowing with them. Kotlin eliminates most of the boilerplate, leaving you with a slimline language, a powerful runtime and a wide choice of libraries. Go doesn't have much to compete with that.

JulianMorrison 8y ago

My feeling is that they'll exist alongside each other in not very overlapping niches. Java is what you write in, if what you're selling isn't the code but some service that the code provides, and you aren't a startup, and you can afford a support team and want a lot of devs. Go is what you write in when you're selling the thing you made directly, like say it's a DB engine, or you're a startup and want low effort support and only want a few devs.

chii 8y ago
I imagine java is what a company would choose if they have a massive budget, but is unwilling to hire cowboy coders. Java makes maintaining a feature easy, and the programmers hired can be average and still be able to make something of acceptable quality, in an acceptable timeframe. A startup rather wants to move fast. Java is harder to move fast at - but Go probably has that in spades. I do believe Go will not succeed in a large, beaurocratic place. And as a start up grow out to become more and more beaurocratic, the tech transitions with it.