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I completely agree. When I first started writing Go (coming from Python/C#) I complained an awful lot about what felt like pointless hamstringing of functionali

by cfcf14 7y ago

I completely agree. When I first started writing Go (coming from Python/C#) I complained an awful lot about what felt like pointless hamstringing of functionality. Go is a simple language, and you don't get many toys. It also feels very verbose at times, and forces you to think a lot about doing things which seem automatic in other languages. However, as time went on, I noticed a few trends. Firstly, forcing me to think more revealed that what I had thought was automatic was more automagic - Go forces you to take responsibility for what your code does to a far greater extent than other more convenient languages, albeit not to the extent that C/Rust does. Secondly, I noticed that code written in Go tends to do what I expect it to pretty much all the time (with the occasional except of async stuff). Sitting down and writing a program in Go often results in something that actually works the first time it runs, and has far fewer runtime surprises. As painful as it is to do numerical computation in Go sometimes, I have a very high level of confidence that I can look at a program, deduce with some accuracy its runtime memory usage & footprint, multithread it easily, and reason (successfully) about possible runtime failure modes and behaviour. This is something I find difficult if not borderline impossible to do in Python, especially utilising the standard '10 layers deep' stack of numerical computing libraries.

new4thaccount 7y ago
What type of numerical computing do you do? By that, I mean what is the problem domain?
- cfcf14 7y ago
  Mostly machine learning for distributed sensor networks (ie: smart meters). Deal with lots of time-series data, state space modelling, some recurrent neural nets (etc). Our shop has a 'golang only' thing going, which means that I end up having to reimplement algorithms in go sometimes from scratch.
  - playing_colours 7y ago
    nice area, I would be interested to learn more into this type of problems. Recently, I became for interested in power electronics / smart grids / energy, and looking for the ways to get in touch with people working on such problems, learn more and join any company on these domains.
    - new4thaccount 7y ago
      It depends on what you want to do as this industry is HUGE. Do you care about metering and working at the solar panel or wind farm level? Or maybe on the actual energy markets that commit and dispatch all generation in a region? Or maybe the vendors that write the software for those markets? Or you could work for the utilities or IPPs that own the generators...or the state public service commission that control state plans. There is also FERC and NERC. There are companies that sell energy storage systems...the list goes on and on.
  - new4thaccount 7y ago
    I saw on the Adacore website a success story for another company that sells smart metering products, so it is nice to see all the work in this space. There are plenty of major vendors as well with smart meter products and the accompanying software. What company do you work for by the way if you can say?
playing_colours 7y ago
Interesting, that I saw a similar pattern like "at first I complained, but as time went on I found some benefits" quite a lot. It can be that your learn a language better, became more comfortable with the way it must be used: say, stopped writing code in Elixir the way your used to write in Python. But the other thing is that it's in our human nature that we tend to look for something positive in bad situations we exposed to for a long. Say like, PHP was a fractal of shit, but when you use it for a long you will notice that it will make you more aware of what functions to use and how not to fall into some undocumented craphole, be more responsible, and do not take it for granted that some function would work flawlessly. The obvious benefit from the shitty situation. EDIT: Grammar
- SmirkingRevenge 7y ago
  My enjoyment using any given language always tends to grow as I get more productive with it, even if I have a more general dislike for the language itself. Making computers do things is fun (usually)! The programming language is (almost) immaterial - depending on the task at hand of course. Despite myself, I've even found myself enjoying JS in the few times I had no choice to avoid it. shudder
  - nfriedly 7y ago
    That part about JS is pretty much the story of my career - I started out completely hating JS, was forced to use it enough to get more familiar with it, and eventually eventually started enjoying it to the point that it's now the primary language I write. (I still hate it occasionally, but there's a lot more joy these days.) The initial turning point was probably around the first release of jQuery...
    - mcguire 7y ago
      [Javascript isn't actually that bad of a language. It really is about 90% of Scheme plus prototype inheritance, which takes some getting used to but ... eh, it's as good as any other option. The problem was that it was one of the battlefields between Microsoft and Netscape and has some really hideous scars in the landscape.] I did not write this. My fingers did not type it. Nothing to see here. Move along. I'm a hedge.

by cfcf14 7y ago

new4thaccount 7y ago

What type of numerical computing do you do? By that, I mean what is the problem domain?

cfcf14 7y ago
Mostly machine learning for distributed sensor networks (ie: smart meters). Deal with lots of time-series data, state space modelling, some recurrent neural nets (etc). Our shop has a 'golang only' thing going, which means that I end up having to reimplement algorithms in go sometimes from scratch.
- playing_colours 7y ago
  nice area, I would be interested to learn more into this type of problems. Recently, I became for interested in power electronics / smart grids / energy, and looking for the ways to get in touch with people working on such problems, learn more and join any company on these domains.
  - new4thaccount 7y ago
    It depends on what you want to do as this industry is HUGE. Do you care about metering and working at the solar panel or wind farm level? Or maybe on the actual energy markets that commit and dispatch all generation in a region? Or maybe the vendors that write the software for those markets? Or you could work for the utilities or IPPs that own the generators...or the state public service commission that control state plans. There is also FERC and NERC. There are companies that sell energy storage systems...the list goes on and on.
- new4thaccount 7y ago
  I saw on the Adacore website a success story for another company that sells smart metering products, so it is nice to see all the work in this space. There are plenty of major vendors as well with smart meter products and the accompanying software. What company do you work for by the way if you can say?

playing_colours 7y ago

Interesting, that I saw a similar pattern like "at first I complained, but as time went on I found some benefits" quite a lot. It can be that your learn a language better, became more comfortable with the way it must be used: say, stopped writing code in Elixir the way your used to write in Python. But the other thing is that it's in our human nature that we tend to look for something positive in bad situations we exposed to for a long. Say like, PHP was a fractal of shit, but when you use it for a long you will notice that it will make you more aware of what functions to use and how not to fall into some undocumented craphole, be more responsible, and do not take it for granted that some function would work flawlessly. The obvious benefit from the shitty situation. EDIT: Grammar

SmirkingRevenge 7y ago
My enjoyment using any given language always tends to grow as I get more productive with it, even if I have a more general dislike for the language itself. Making computers do things is fun (usually)! The programming language is (almost) immaterial - depending on the task at hand of course. Despite myself, I've even found myself enjoying JS in the few times I had no choice to avoid it. shudder
- nfriedly 7y ago
  That part about JS is pretty much the story of my career - I started out completely hating JS, was forced to use it enough to get more familiar with it, and eventually eventually started enjoying it to the point that it's now the primary language I write. (I still hate it occasionally, but there's a lot more joy these days.) The initial turning point was probably around the first release of jQuery...
  - mcguire 7y ago
    [Javascript isn't actually that bad of a language. It really is about 90% of Scheme plus prototype inheritance, which takes some getting used to but ... eh, it's as good as any other option. The problem was that it was one of the battlefields between Microsoft and Netscape and has some really hideous scars in the landscape.] I did not write this. My fingers did not type it. Nothing to see here. Move along. I'm a hedge.