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> I think the Golang community is going to find itself growing more slowly as folks increasingly realize other options offer similar benefits without the bad er

> I think the Golang community is going to find itself growing more slowly as folks increasingly realize other options offer similar benefits without the bad ergonomics. Personally I enjoy writing Go code similar to the way that I enjoy writing Python code. So they did something right because I wouldn't ever say the same about Java or PHP. Edit: As a fun tangent... Python experienced the same kind of fracturing that adding generics or other dramatic features to a language can cause with the 2to3 move. There are still projects based on 2.7. It was hard to get people all on the same page once the community was split. What's also interesting is to watch the same thing happen with asyncio, which is practically an all-or-nothing thing to use in your Python project, so much so that most Python code still doesn't use it. Just an observation, but breaking changes to a language can really do a number on the community.

KirinDave 7y ago
I don't think folks are on 2.7 because they love it. I think they're there because it's difficult and expensive to migrate Python code.
- wybiral 7y ago
  There were multiple reasons based on my experience. New people were still using 2.7 tutorials because there was way more information out there than for 3. And package managers in Linux systems took a long time to change. But the asyncio example is probably a better example of a fundamental program design change that's causing weird fracturing and incompatible library designs. Trying to use non-async from an async framework is a mess, trying to use async from a non-async is hard to integrate, etc.
  - viraptor 7y ago
    I don't believe that python 2/3 change has much to do with sync/async issues. In python 2 we had twisted which was its own async universe. The sync and async worlds are disconnected in pretty much every language, but it's mostly a non-issue. You just don't mix them and it doesn't become a mess.
    - wybiral 7y ago
      That's not what I said, they were two times that the community fractured. There is fracturing with asyncio. Look at popular libraries. The "requests" library comes to mind, but there are others. It's hard to use different 3rd party components between the two paradigms which causes fragmentation in the libraries. You end up with aiohttp-requests and stuff. PS: it does make a huge difference. If someone posts "how do I make a web server?" on a forum you'll get two different frameworks and approaches as answers. The community basically goes in two directions and much of the work becomes incompatible. The multithreaded sync vs event loop async just don't play well with each other. There still aren't many 3rd party libraries that really focus on asyncio because much of the community is still in the "threaded" design.
- a1369209993 7y ago
  I don't know about love, but it's significantly better than python3. I'm on 2.7 because the authors refuse to continue development of python in favor of a different, inferior language. Difficulty and expense of migration have nothing to do with it.
meruru 7y ago
pg wrote a bunch of really good essays about Java vs Python vs Lisp and how those were perceived by programmers. I always remember them when I see Go being compared to Java while still being liked by Hackers. I wonder what he would write about this phenomenon.
- parasubvert 7y ago
  pg has a blind spot wrt Java. Lots of hackers liked (and still like) Java ecosystem (see Kotlin for more recent fun). like lisp hackers, they hung out on their own and didn't mingle.
  - meddlepal 7y ago
    This, but also I suspect a lot of people that claim to dislike Java are tainted by it's framework heavy ecosystem especially early-mid 2000s. The language itself is fairly clean and very pragmatic.
    - meruru 7y ago
      FWIW the essays I mentioned are from the early 2000s. Java's Cover is from 2001: http://www.paulgraham.com/javacover.html http://www.paulgraham.com/javacover.html
      - parasubvert 7y ago
        That essay has proven to be astonishingly wrong. It’s 18 years later and I suspect he’d say the same things about Golang.
    - parasubvert 7y ago
      Possibly, though Java these days is largely “Spring”.
  - meruru 7y ago
    Those essays were written a long time ago and reflected the situation at the time. I can't really say how accurate they were, but you're using the present tense and mentioning present technology, so I thought it would be worth to emphasize that.

KirinDave 7y ago

I don't think folks are on 2.7 because they love it. I think they're there because it's difficult and expensive to migrate Python code.

wybiral 7y ago
There were multiple reasons based on my experience. New people were still using 2.7 tutorials because there was way more information out there than for 3. And package managers in Linux systems took a long time to change. But the asyncio example is probably a better example of a fundamental program design change that's causing weird fracturing and incompatible library designs. Trying to use non-async from an async framework is a mess, trying to use async from a non-async is hard to integrate, etc.
- viraptor 7y ago
  I don't believe that python 2/3 change has much to do with sync/async issues. In python 2 we had twisted which was its own async universe. The sync and async worlds are disconnected in pretty much every language, but it's mostly a non-issue. You just don't mix them and it doesn't become a mess.
  - wybiral 7y ago
    That's not what I said, they were two times that the community fractured. There is fracturing with asyncio. Look at popular libraries. The "requests" library comes to mind, but there are others. It's hard to use different 3rd party components between the two paradigms which causes fragmentation in the libraries. You end up with aiohttp-requests and stuff. PS: it does make a huge difference. If someone posts "how do I make a web server?" on a forum you'll get two different frameworks and approaches as answers. The community basically goes in two directions and much of the work becomes incompatible. The multithreaded sync vs event loop async just don't play well with each other. There still aren't many 3rd party libraries that really focus on asyncio because much of the community is still in the "threaded" design.
a1369209993 7y ago
I don't know about love, but it's significantly better than python3. I'm on 2.7 because the authors refuse to continue development of python in favor of a different, inferior language. Difficulty and expense of migration have nothing to do with it.

meruru 7y ago

pg wrote a bunch of really good essays about Java vs Python vs Lisp and how those were perceived by programmers. I always remember them when I see Go being compared to Java while still being liked by Hackers. I wonder what he would write about this phenomenon.

parasubvert 7y ago
pg has a blind spot wrt Java. Lots of hackers liked (and still like) Java ecosystem (see Kotlin for more recent fun). like lisp hackers, they hung out on their own and didn't mingle.
- meddlepal 7y ago
  This, but also I suspect a lot of people that claim to dislike Java are tainted by it's framework heavy ecosystem especially early-mid 2000s. The language itself is fairly clean and very pragmatic.
  - meruru 7y ago
    FWIW the essays I mentioned are from the early 2000s. Java's Cover is from 2001: http://www.paulgraham.com/javacover.html http://www.paulgraham.com/javacover.html
    - parasubvert 7y ago
      That essay has proven to be astonishingly wrong. It’s 18 years later and I suspect he’d say the same things about Golang.
  - parasubvert 7y ago
    Possibly, though Java these days is largely “Spring”.
- meruru 7y ago
  Those essays were written a long time ago and reflected the situation at the time. I can't really say how accurate they were, but you're using the present tense and mentioning present technology, so I thought it would be worth to emphasize that.