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> Successful languages pay attention to what people want, but to change the language according to what most people want is, I believe, a recipe for chaos and

> Successful languages pay attention to what people want, but to change the language according to what most people want is, I believe, a recipe for chaos and incoherence. I believe that every successful language must have a coherent vision that is shared by a relatively small group of people. I'm continually surprised that more of the greater, vocal community does not grok this.

zzzcpan 7y ago
They do grok it, they just don't trust that specific small group of people.
- a1369209993 7y ago
  More to the point, they correctly perceive that that specific small group of people are acting on behalf of a evil corporation, rather than based on a coherent vision of what a successful language should look like.
prepend 7y ago
I don’t think the issue is a small group of people holding a vision. For me, the issue is that a company changes the vision based on some unknown goals that the company has that are not known to the community. I think it’s disingenuous to paint this as a tyranny of the masses type situation as no one is calling for democracy. And even if they did, Apache and Python are showing successes in that area. If google wanted an OSS language, they would have non-google committers. It’s perfectly cool to have company run languages. I think people just need to be aware and not confused that Go is anything other than Google’s language that we all get to use for free. For me, with almost all things google, the risk is when Google grows bored with this and makes all the employees work on other stuff.
- xyzzy_plugh 7y ago
  > And even if they did, Apache and Python are showing successes in that area. I find both of these communities to be huge turn offs. I think Apache projects and Python demonstrate varied quality; design by committee. Conversely I find Go releases to be pretty high quality. When they are marginally suspect, I tend to find the strongest critics are members of the Go core team (e.g. future of http, sql packages). > If google wanted an OSS language, they would have non-google committers. I don't buy this line of reasoning. Go has been extremely welcoming to contributors. You don't need to be a committee to contribute. Are the thousands of projects open sourced by corporations under their corporate GitHub account not _true_ OSS to you? > For me, with almost all things google, the risk is when Google grows bored with this and makes all the employees work on other stuff. I understand this, but it's FUD. We've heard nothing but positive feedback from Googlers (no "they won't let us do X"), and if this _did_ happen, I would expect the existing committers to rebel sufficiently (i.e. quit) that this problem solves itself. Until then, I see no cause to warrant a change in management.
- ridiculous_fish 7y ago
  > If google wanted an OSS language, they would have non-google committers Ian claims "59 Googlers on the committers list and 51 non-Googlers." I was surprised by that too.
viraptor 7y ago
Whether I grok this or not doesn't really influence the behaviour. Option 1: to change the language I need to say what I want. Option 2: to change the language I need to influence the small group of people enough... by saying what I want.
- abtinf 7y ago
  Option 3: you write a coherent proposal of a quality comparable to those written by the committers and work with them to implement it, possibly becoming a committer yourself and getting hired by google in the process.
abraae 7y ago
Fred Brooks said it well in the Mythical Man Month: "the sheer number of minds to be coordinated affects the cost of the effort, for a major part of the cost is communication and correcting the ill effects of miscommunication (system debugging). This, too, suggests that one wants the system to be built by as few minds as possible."
bassman9000 7y ago
The whole paragraph is worth reading If a language is to change over time, this specification or implementation must change. Somebody has to decide how changes will be made. All successful languages have a small set of people who make the final decisions. Many people will provide input to this decision, but no successful language--indeed, no successful free software project of any sort--is a democracy. Successful languages pay attention to what people want, but to change the language according to what most people want is, I believe, a recipe for chaos and incoherence. I believe that every successful language must have a coherent vision that is shared by a relatively small group of people. And again Many people will provide input to this decision, but no successful language--indeed, no successful free software project of any sort--is a democracy. On point.

zzzcpan 7y ago

They do grok it, they just don't trust that specific small group of people.

a1369209993 7y ago
More to the point, they correctly perceive that that specific small group of people are acting on behalf of a evil corporation, rather than based on a coherent vision of what a successful language should look like.

prepend 7y ago

I don’t think the issue is a small group of people holding a vision. For me, the issue is that a company changes the vision based on some unknown goals that the company has that are not known to the community. I think it’s disingenuous to paint this as a tyranny of the masses type situation as no one is calling for democracy. And even if they did, Apache and Python are showing successes in that area. If google wanted an OSS language, they would have non-google committers. It’s perfectly cool to have company run languages. I think people just need to be aware and not confused that Go is anything other than Google’s language that we all get to use for free. For me, with almost all things google, the risk is when Google grows bored with this and makes all the employees work on other stuff.

xyzzy_plugh 7y ago
> And even if they did, Apache and Python are showing successes in that area. I find both of these communities to be huge turn offs. I think Apache projects and Python demonstrate varied quality; design by committee. Conversely I find Go releases to be pretty high quality. When they are marginally suspect, I tend to find the strongest critics are members of the Go core team (e.g. future of http, sql packages). > If google wanted an OSS language, they would have non-google committers. I don't buy this line of reasoning. Go has been extremely welcoming to contributors. You don't need to be a committee to contribute. Are the thousands of projects open sourced by corporations under their corporate GitHub account not _true_ OSS to you? > For me, with almost all things google, the risk is when Google grows bored with this and makes all the employees work on other stuff. I understand this, but it's FUD. We've heard nothing but positive feedback from Googlers (no "they won't let us do X"), and if this _did_ happen, I would expect the existing committers to rebel sufficiently (i.e. quit) that this problem solves itself. Until then, I see no cause to warrant a change in management.
ridiculous_fish 7y ago
> If google wanted an OSS language, they would have non-google committers Ian claims "59 Googlers on the committers list and 51 non-Googlers." I was surprised by that too.

viraptor 7y ago

Whether I grok this or not doesn't really influence the behaviour. Option 1: to change the language I need to say what I want. Option 2: to change the language I need to influence the small group of people enough... by saying what I want.

abtinf 7y ago
Option 3: you write a coherent proposal of a quality comparable to those written by the committers and work with them to implement it, possibly becoming a committer yourself and getting hired by google in the process.

abraae 7y ago

Fred Brooks said it well in the Mythical Man Month: "the sheer number of minds to be coordinated affects the cost of the effort, for a major part of the cost is communication and correcting the ill effects of miscommunication (system debugging). This, too, suggests that one wants the system to be built by as few minds as possible."

bassman9000 7y ago

The whole paragraph is worth reading If a language is to change over time, this specification or implementation must change. Somebody has to decide how changes will be made. All successful languages have a small set of people who make the final decisions. Many people will provide input to this decision, but no successful language--indeed, no successful free software project of any sort--is a democracy. Successful languages pay attention to what people want, but to change the language according to what most people want is, I believe, a recipe for chaos and incoherence. I believe that every successful language must have a coherent vision that is shared by a relatively small group of people. And again Many people will provide input to this decision, but no successful language--indeed, no successful free software project of any sort--is a democracy. On point.