5 ms·

GO syntax is very regressive comparing to where we hopped programming languages should go. I believe GO success is partly because in recent years, we have many

by stunt 7y ago

GO syntax is very regressive comparing to where we hopped programming languages should go. I believe GO success is partly because in recent years, we have many new specialized engineers that programming isn’t their main focus (DevOps, Data Scientists, SREs) and naturally they are looking for tooling with shorter learning curve. Also when you consider how many developers have a hard time to learn GIT after so many years, you realize why companies need something as simple as GO comparing to Rust, or Java comparing to Scala for instance.

F-0X 7y ago
>GO syntax is very regressive comparing to where we hopped programming languages should go. Speak for yourself maybe, but I appreciate Go's overall style. You also mention Rust and Scala in your post. If that is to be the future of language syntax, I should quit.
- minxomat 7y ago
  The syntax being regressive is pretty objective. It's not a value judgement. It has it's pros and cons.
- shantly 7y ago
  I like that I can dive into pretty much any Go code and it won't be doing anything basic some way I'm not used to or can't very quickly figure out without having to look anything up. Kinda like Java in that regard, but even more so, plus way less verbose. I mean it's gotten better but take Javascript where just a few years ago fundamental branching & execution order and might be provided by some library and it wasn't always the same one (thinking especially of various competing promise libraries) or friggin' imports might look different. Or Rails where you might have a codebase come across your laptop that's in some version you haven't used recently and using a bunch of libraries you're not used to and now half the symbols in a given file aren't defined there or anywhere else that Grep can find and it's unclear where they even come from, so it's off to the docs for a bunch of abandoned gems to get any sense of what's even going on. Go mostly avoids that sort of deeply unproductive junk. It does achieve that by not providing certain things, plus static typing (thank god for TypeScript, finally some sanity). I'm OK with that. I don't use it as my daily driver but I'm never even a little sad to drop into or contribute to a Go codebase, and I don't need a huge margin of uncertainty on the question "how fast can you get up to speed with this?" for Go code, which I can't say of just about any other language, sight-unseen.
  - spullara 7y ago
    Go is pretty verbose, especially error handling, vs modern Java code.
    - reificator 7y ago
      You and I clearly have different error handling strategies. I will say that a rust-style error propagation operator would cut verbosity even further. (Though that is harder to do in go with their choice of multiple return over sum types.) Still, try/catch seems far more verbose for common error handling strategies to me. And I'd rather see an acknowledgement that something can fail as close to that thing as possible, rather than hunting thorough the stack to find some global try/catch block that silently swallows the error in order to cut down on verbosity.
      - spullara 7y ago
        I'd rather have the choice to handle it locally or not. If you have bad habits you have bad habits and another language isn't going to fix that. If Go adapts Rust style then I would agree, it could get to be where you can choose to handle the errors locally or up the stack, like exceptions, and you will be in a better place.
        reificator 7y ago
        It's less about bad habits and more about there being a clear and consistent signal for what can throw or not. It's similar to why I like options over nulls despite the fact that you're basically doing the same thing in both systems. If only Java's particular implementation hadn't ruined the public opinion on checked exceptions...
        kjeetgill 7y ago
        What do you think is the best way to handle checked exceptions? This comes up all the time on HN and I've personally landed on preferring Java's checked/unchecked system from anything else I've seen. I get that sometimes you should handle your errors in the small, like Go's errors or Rust's Maybe (or Try?) styles might prefer, but I hate not having any exceptions options to "let things crash".
Elrac 7y ago
I hear you, but there are also upsides. As a veteran of many programming languages, I find Go's minimal feature list a plus! Especially if I'm not rushed, I have an annoying tendency to try for the most elegant, succinct, idiomatic or general way to program a solution, and given a sufficiently expressive language I then fall victim to analysis paralysis. By giving me so few options, Go removes a major cognitive load. Very often there's a single obvious way to get something done and I'm not tempted to try anything fancy.
- kitd 7y ago
  I find the opposite effect to be true. In many/most cases, the type model of a piece of Go code is not at all obvious without detailed inspection. When pretty much anything can implement any interface, and one can only tell whether an interface is fully implemented by close examination of a whole source file (rather than reading a simple implements keyword), the cognitive load is far greater.
  - kjeetgill 7y ago
    I understand where you're coming from, and I've made many a shallow criticism from a place of frustration, but please understand that thats what this is. The lack of an implements is not just a matter of "less syntax fever!" but one that facilitates other language design choices: in particular static compile time duck-typing. Among the "everybody knows or knows-about" class of languages this is pretty fresh. You can go back and forth on the point of this (or the value of the trade-offs) but it's pretty key to Go's flavor. As a Java geek, I'm pretty familiar with the way you'd prefer and I like it quite a bit too, but once I'd tried it, I've really missed Go's flavor more than a handful of times. Static duck-typing has some great downstream ecosystem effects. For one, it really facilitates smaller, tight interfaces. If my code uses a type A from another package B, and A has 20 functions that in my code only uses 3 of, I can create an interface on my end with just the 3. Then any testing or any alternative implementations apply only to the minimal interface. If that alternative implementation is by another author, it can interop with my code without importing type A package B. Obviously you don't need this all the time but it's killer when you do.
  - 7y ago
icholy 7y ago
It sucks when you're writing it, but makes up for it when working with other people's code.
rad_gruchalski 7y ago
This will probably confirm your point. I write software professionally for 20 years. I’ve written professionally in: perl, php, java, cfml, actionscript 2 and 3, javasctipt / node, c#, java, erlang, ruby, scala, python and golang. The last year almost exclusively golang. I work full back end / distributed systems and infrastructure automation. I find golang simplicity liberating, especially now with GO111MODULE. No need for stuff like node’s package.json, no maven’s project.xml (I have no problem with maven), no sbt, small native binaries (this is where golang, in my head, beats erlang), simple type system. Instead of focusing on designing the ins and outs of the architecture, it allows me to focus on the flow, like erlang! The structure, design, come later, with proper unit and integration tests. I love it, it is so simple to switch from r&d mode into production grade system development.

by stunt 7y ago

F-0X 7y ago

>GO syntax is very regressive comparing to where we hopped programming languages should go. Speak for yourself maybe, but I appreciate Go's overall style. You also mention Rust and Scala in your post. If that is to be the future of language syntax, I should quit.

minxomat 7y ago
The syntax being regressive is pretty objective. It's not a value judgement. It has it's pros and cons.
shantly 7y ago
I like that I can dive into pretty much any Go code and it won't be doing anything basic some way I'm not used to or can't very quickly figure out without having to look anything up. Kinda like Java in that regard, but even more so, plus way less verbose. I mean it's gotten better but take Javascript where just a few years ago fundamental branching & execution order and might be provided by some library and it wasn't always the same one (thinking especially of various competing promise libraries) or friggin' imports might look different. Or Rails where you might have a codebase come across your laptop that's in some version you haven't used recently and using a bunch of libraries you're not used to and now half the symbols in a given file aren't defined there or anywhere else that Grep can find and it's unclear where they even come from, so it's off to the docs for a bunch of abandoned gems to get any sense of what's even going on. Go mostly avoids that sort of deeply unproductive junk. It does achieve that by not providing certain things, plus static typing (thank god for TypeScript, finally some sanity). I'm OK with that. I don't use it as my daily driver but I'm never even a little sad to drop into or contribute to a Go codebase, and I don't need a huge margin of uncertainty on the question "how fast can you get up to speed with this?" for Go code, which I can't say of just about any other language, sight-unseen.
- spullara 7y ago
  Go is pretty verbose, especially error handling, vs modern Java code.
  - reificator 7y ago
    You and I clearly have different error handling strategies. I will say that a rust-style error propagation operator would cut verbosity even further. (Though that is harder to do in go with their choice of multiple return over sum types.) Still, try/catch seems far more verbose for common error handling strategies to me. And I'd rather see an acknowledgement that something can fail as close to that thing as possible, rather than hunting thorough the stack to find some global try/catch block that silently swallows the error in order to cut down on verbosity.
    - spullara 7y ago
      I'd rather have the choice to handle it locally or not. If you have bad habits you have bad habits and another language isn't going to fix that. If Go adapts Rust style then I would agree, it could get to be where you can choose to handle the errors locally or up the stack, like exceptions, and you will be in a better place.
      - reificator 7y ago
        It's less about bad habits and more about there being a clear and consistent signal for what can throw or not. It's similar to why I like options over nulls despite the fact that you're basically doing the same thing in both systems. If only Java's particular implementation hadn't ruined the public opinion on checked exceptions...
        kjeetgill 7y ago
        What do you think is the best way to handle checked exceptions? This comes up all the time on HN and I've personally landed on preferring Java's checked/unchecked system from anything else I've seen. I get that sometimes you should handle your errors in the small, like Go's errors or Rust's Maybe (or Try?) styles might prefer, but I hate not having any exceptions options to "let things crash".

Elrac 7y ago

I hear you, but there are also upsides. As a veteran of many programming languages, I find Go's minimal feature list a plus! Especially if I'm not rushed, I have an annoying tendency to try for the most elegant, succinct, idiomatic or general way to program a solution, and given a sufficiently expressive language I then fall victim to analysis paralysis. By giving me so few options, Go removes a major cognitive load. Very often there's a single obvious way to get something done and I'm not tempted to try anything fancy.

kitd 7y ago
I find the opposite effect to be true. In many/most cases, the type model of a piece of Go code is not at all obvious without detailed inspection. When pretty much anything can implement any interface, and one can only tell whether an interface is fully implemented by close examination of a whole source file (rather than reading a simple implements keyword), the cognitive load is far greater.
- kjeetgill 7y ago
  I understand where you're coming from, and I've made many a shallow criticism from a place of frustration, but please understand that thats what this is. The lack of an implements is not just a matter of "less syntax fever!" but one that facilitates other language design choices: in particular static compile time duck-typing. Among the "everybody knows or knows-about" class of languages this is pretty fresh. You can go back and forth on the point of this (or the value of the trade-offs) but it's pretty key to Go's flavor. As a Java geek, I'm pretty familiar with the way you'd prefer and I like it quite a bit too, but once I'd tried it, I've really missed Go's flavor more than a handful of times. Static duck-typing has some great downstream ecosystem effects. For one, it really facilitates smaller, tight interfaces. If my code uses a type A from another package B, and A has 20 functions that in my code only uses 3 of, I can create an interface on my end with just the 3. Then any testing or any alternative implementations apply only to the minimal interface. If that alternative implementation is by another author, it can interop with my code without importing type A package B. Obviously you don't need this all the time but it's killer when you do.
- 7y ago

icholy 7y ago

It sucks when you're writing it, but makes up for it when working with other people's code.

rad_gruchalski 7y ago

This will probably confirm your point. I write software professionally for 20 years. I’ve written professionally in: perl, php, java, cfml, actionscript 2 and 3, javasctipt / node, c#, java, erlang, ruby, scala, python and golang. The last year almost exclusively golang. I work full back end / distributed systems and infrastructure automation. I find golang simplicity liberating, especially now with GO111MODULE. No need for stuff like node’s package.json, no maven’s project.xml (I have no problem with maven), no sbt, small native binaries (this is where golang, in my head, beats erlang), simple type system. Instead of focusing on designing the ins and outs of the architecture, it allows me to focus on the flow, like erlang! The structure, design, come later, with proper unit and integration tests. I love it, it is so simple to switch from r&d mode into production grade system development.