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>>Go is an OK language, not a great one. This is probably the most succinct and accurate description of Go. It's fairly decent and reasonably reliable at small

>>Go is an OK language, not a great one. This is probably the most succinct and accurate description of Go. It's fairly decent and reasonably reliable at small/medium scale (which is why it is popular among the microservices crowd), but has no outstanding features. IMO by far the biggest reason it became popular is that it is backed by Google (which makes it a "safe" choice). If it weren't, most people would not have heard of it today.

tptacek 7y ago
"Decent and reasonable at small/medium scale" is a weird way to sum up Go in a Go vs. Rust discussion, since Go is deployed at drastically larger scales than Rust is currently. I don't think there's any validity to the idea that Go tops out at medium-scale projects; in fact, a more common argument against it is that it makes sacrifices to facilitate large-scale programming that people don't like.
- steveklabnik 7y ago
  > Go is deployed at drastically larger scales than Rust is currently. I think it's important to define which "scale" you're talking about here; Go is deployed at a larger scale in the sense of number of deployments, but both are deployed in production inside the largest tech companies in the world. For example, Rust is now at the core of all of AWS Lambda (and Fargate). That being said, I do think that "decent and reasonable at small/medium scale" is an attempt at damning through faint praise, and is certainly not how I'd characterize Go in any sense.
  - tptacek 7y ago
    Go is doing more stuff in large-scale deployments, processing more traffic, doing more transactions, than Rust is. I don't just mean there are a lot more Go backend projects (there are). I mean that some of those projects do a lot more work than Rust does right now --- I don't mean ubiquitous infrastructure things like Docker and k8s, I mean purpose-built components for specific large-scale applications/platforms. For instance: "Today, most Dropbox infrastructure is written in Go." Or: "Today Go is at the heart of CloudFlare's services". Or: "Rend is a high-performance proxy written in Go with Netflix use cases [ed: all internal memcache] as the primary driver for development". Or: "The search infrastructure on [Soundcloud] Next is driven by Elastic Search, but managed and interfaced with the rest of SoundCloud almost exclusively through Go services." Or: "How We Built Uber Engineering’s Highest Query per Second Service Using Go.". Or: "Handling five billion sessions a day – in real time [at Twitter]". I don't see where there's room for a "that said" here. Both languages are obviously capable of scaling.
    - steveklabnik 7y ago
      Yeah, as mentioned, I don't think that's true anymore. Historically, it has, but Rust has had a lot of high-profile, high-traffic deployments in the last year. But honestly, the high order bit is: > Both languages are obviously capable of scaling. This is clearly true, and I agree fully. I don't really want to argue "is this deployment really larger than that deployment", as it's kind of silly. The point is that both have demonstrated the ability to scale to the largest workloads, and so knocking either one of Rust or Go on this axis doesn't make sense.
      - tptacek 7y ago
        I like Firecracker too, more than I like Docker (which is, obviously, Go). I don't have any problem with Rust. The parent comment, about Go being suited for small/medium scale programming, was wrong.
      - stompl 7y ago
        >but Rust has had a lot of high-profile, high-traffic deployments in the last year. But honestly, the high order bit is: Name them, and then, maybe, you will have a valid point. Until then you're just spewing shit, as usual.
    - woah 7y ago
      PHP is doing more by whatever metric you want than Go or Rust. Does that mean it is better?
      - tptacek 7y ago
        That's not the question the thread is discussing (thankfully; "better" or "worse" languages is a stupid message board debate to have).
pjmlp 7y ago
Proof being that almost no one cared about Limbo and Plan 9 keeps being referenced, while forgetting about Inferno.

tptacek 7y ago

"Decent and reasonable at small/medium scale" is a weird way to sum up Go in a Go vs. Rust discussion, since Go is deployed at drastically larger scales than Rust is currently. I don't think there's any validity to the idea that Go tops out at medium-scale projects; in fact, a more common argument against it is that it makes sacrifices to facilitate large-scale programming that people don't like.

steveklabnik 7y ago
> Go is deployed at drastically larger scales than Rust is currently. I think it's important to define which "scale" you're talking about here; Go is deployed at a larger scale in the sense of number of deployments, but both are deployed in production inside the largest tech companies in the world. For example, Rust is now at the core of all of AWS Lambda (and Fargate). That being said, I do think that "decent and reasonable at small/medium scale" is an attempt at damning through faint praise, and is certainly not how I'd characterize Go in any sense.
- tptacek 7y ago
  Go is doing more stuff in large-scale deployments, processing more traffic, doing more transactions, than Rust is. I don't just mean there are a lot more Go backend projects (there are). I mean that some of those projects do a lot more work than Rust does right now --- I don't mean ubiquitous infrastructure things like Docker and k8s, I mean purpose-built components for specific large-scale applications/platforms. For instance: "Today, most Dropbox infrastructure is written in Go." Or: "Today Go is at the heart of CloudFlare's services". Or: "Rend is a high-performance proxy written in Go with Netflix use cases [ed: all internal memcache] as the primary driver for development". Or: "The search infrastructure on [Soundcloud] Next is driven by Elastic Search, but managed and interfaced with the rest of SoundCloud almost exclusively through Go services." Or: "How We Built Uber Engineering’s Highest Query per Second Service Using Go.". Or: "Handling five billion sessions a day – in real time [at Twitter]". I don't see where there's room for a "that said" here. Both languages are obviously capable of scaling.
  - steveklabnik 7y ago
    Yeah, as mentioned, I don't think that's true anymore. Historically, it has, but Rust has had a lot of high-profile, high-traffic deployments in the last year. But honestly, the high order bit is: > Both languages are obviously capable of scaling. This is clearly true, and I agree fully. I don't really want to argue "is this deployment really larger than that deployment", as it's kind of silly. The point is that both have demonstrated the ability to scale to the largest workloads, and so knocking either one of Rust or Go on this axis doesn't make sense.
    - tptacek 7y ago
      I like Firecracker too, more than I like Docker (which is, obviously, Go). I don't have any problem with Rust. The parent comment, about Go being suited for small/medium scale programming, was wrong.
    - stompl 7y ago
      >but Rust has had a lot of high-profile, high-traffic deployments in the last year. But honestly, the high order bit is: Name them, and then, maybe, you will have a valid point. Until then you're just spewing shit, as usual.
  - woah 7y ago
    PHP is doing more by whatever metric you want than Go or Rust. Does that mean it is better?
    - tptacek 7y ago
      That's not the question the thread is discussing (thankfully; "better" or "worse" languages is a stupid message board debate to have).

pjmlp 7y ago

Proof being that almost no one cared about Limbo and Plan 9 keeps being referenced, while forgetting about Inferno.