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Go was always intended for writing the type of networked application servers that are common in Google's infrastructure. [I was at Google when it was released

Go was always intended for writing the type of networked application servers that are common in Google's infrastructure. [I was at Google when it was released - I thought you were too?] It's succeeded at basically the same niche that it was intended for. The difference, as another commenter points out, is Rob Pike's ignorance of how the world outside of Bell Labs & Google had changed. In the 80s you would've built networked microservices in C. In the 2010s you built them in Python or Node.JS. Hence if you have a new language that's a success in the microservice application-server market, it will end up cannibalizing Python and Node.JS, not C. Python cannibalized Java in the 2010s and late 00s, and Java cannibalized C in the 2000s and late 90s. Go is still inferior to Python in prototyping, in web development, and in data-science. (I used it for the former 2 while still at Google, and decided it wasn't an upgrade.) But it's superior for production microservices, and that's an increasingly large market these days.

cletus 7y ago
> Go was always intended for writing the type of networked application servers that are common in Google's infrastructure. [I was at Google when it was released - I thought you were too?] I was (2010-2017 to be exact) so I remember how this was communicated but internally and externally. This HN submission [1] to HN from 2011 reflects my recollection of that messaging that Go was a better C. Even better, Rob in his own words [2]: > I was asked a few weeks ago, "What was the biggest surprise you encountered rolling out Go?" I knew the answer instantly: Although we expected C++ programmers to see Go as an alternative, instead most Go programmers come from languages like Python and Ruby. Very few come from C++. > Go is still inferior to Python in prototyping, in web development, and in data-science On the data science point, I certainly agree that nothing looks likely to displace numpy/scipy anytime soon. Python's much-maligned GIL does simplify C module extensions and, I believe, was a key contributor in Facebook choosing to move to Mercurial many years ago (long before my time). I wrote a fairly significant internal app at Google in Python and essentially swore I'd never do it again. The way I like to put it is that I don't want to write unit tests for spelling mistakes. I haven't used Go for Web development but I'd already choose it over Python just for static typing. As an aside, I found the protobuf integration in Python to be basically terrible. Perhaps it's improved in the last 7+ years though. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2535206 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2535206 [2]: https://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2012/06/less-is-exponentially-more.html https://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2012/06/less-is-exponenti...

cletus 7y ago

> Go was always intended for writing the type of networked application servers that are common in Google's infrastructure. [I was at Google when it was released - I thought you were too?] I was (2010-2017 to be exact) so I remember how this was communicated but internally and externally. This HN submission [1] to HN from 2011 reflects my recollection of that messaging that Go was a better C. Even better, Rob in his own words [2]: > I was asked a few weeks ago, "What was the biggest surprise you encountered rolling out Go?" I knew the answer instantly: Although we expected C++ programmers to see Go as an alternative, instead most Go programmers come from languages like Python and Ruby. Very few come from C++. > Go is still inferior to Python in prototyping, in web development, and in data-science On the data science point, I certainly agree that nothing looks likely to displace numpy/scipy anytime soon. Python's much-maligned GIL does simplify C module extensions and, I believe, was a key contributor in Facebook choosing to move to Mercurial many years ago (long before my time). I wrote a fairly significant internal app at Google in Python and essentially swore I'd never do it again. The way I like to put it is that I don't want to write unit tests for spelling mistakes. I haven't used Go for Web development but I'd already choose it over Python just for static typing. As an aside, I found the protobuf integration in Python to be basically terrible. Perhaps it's improved in the last 7+ years though. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2535206 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2535206 [2]: https://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2012/06/less-is-exponentially-more.html https://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2012/06/less-is-exponenti...