4 ms·

Amen to this. I don't remember the source, but I read somewhere that Google's internal 'killer feature' is indeed the low barrier of entry. You can get a new in

by Chiron1991 6y ago

Amen to this. I don't remember the source, but I read somewhere that Google's internal 'killer feature' is indeed the low barrier of entry. You can get a new intern working with it in literally a week. It's also good enough for all employees up to the very senior people, so you get a good coverage of people with the same tool, which is a tremendous benefit in team cooperation.

aspenmayer 6y ago
Do you have a good intro to coding in Go for absolute beginners? It’s so hard to Google for Go related things, ironically.
- jpxw 6y ago
  Google “Golang” rather than “Go”
  - aspenmayer 6y ago
    Ah, thanks. I was actually worried that it was a different, similarly named language in the same space, and the existential dread of trying to untie that Gordian knot via Google itself left me content to just make a mental note, and ask those who do know when it came up next.
- mjlee 6y ago
  Absolute beginniners to go or to programming in general? If it's the former, I'd recommend https://tour.golang.org https://tour.golang.org and The Go Programming Language. If it's the latter... I can't personally recommend any beginner's textbooks which are written to use go, but it might be worth looking at Head First Go, the rest of the books in the series are quite approachable.
  - aspenmayer 6y ago
    That’s great, two for two! Thank you. What would you say is the best starter language these days? Java? Python? Something else like C++ or Rust? I am not a coder at all. I mangle configurations and implement functionality upon request, but I always run up against scripts and CLI and I am no expert in bash or powershell and I don’t have to quit vim. But I get by okay. Not a dig, I just admit I only know as much as I do primarily from self-learning and doing. That’s why I care to learn what I’m not seeing because I’m not able to do it yet: the code. There’s just so much to not know, especially about setups and small things that impart outsize benefits or functionality, like dotfiles for instance. All these things are so hard to learn in isolation. It’s hard to have scope and find the rails under you to know how to turn and move yourself around in the dev space, in a basic computing, nuts and bolts sense, if that makes any sense. So if you have any tips about things like that, let me know. For example: https://missing.csail.mit.edu https://missing.csail.mit.edu They even link back, how nice!
    - hnarn 6y ago
      Python is very commonly recommended as the "gateway drug" to programming, and for good reason. It's extremely well used, sought after, and easy to get into. When you feel comfortable with programming fundamentals in Python (everything from variables, functions, loops to classes and modules) I'd recommend looking into Go or Rust -- the latter is probably more of a challenge but it makes sense as a step up from Python. My extremely personal opinions about the rest of the languages you mention, and these are my personal opinions so there's no need to tell me how wrong I am because personal opinions almost always are wrong (to someone else): - Java: Highly sought after in the market but mostly found in legacy code bases, bloated (JVM) and not very well liked by developers apart from some scenarios where it's already used, or those that have been working with it for a decade. - C++: Hated by everyone except those that are already very proficient in it and is quickly being surpassed by Rust, by no means a useless language but not one that makes sense to pick up from scratch in 2020 unless you have a specific reason to.
      - aspenmayer 6y ago
        I’m more into applications of technology, and security is a focus. For instance, doesn’t meterpreter use Ruby? That didn’t make the list, but I couldn’t say why. Maybe it’s not as easy to learn? I’m just grasping at this point. Would you say it’s worth looking into C++ due to legacy codebases?
        hnarn 6y ago
        Sure, if you want to understand stuff written in C/C++ then that's an obvious use case for learning it. The same goes for any language. Ruby isn't worse than Python by any stretch but my personal view is that it got really popular due to "Ruby on Rails", on its own it's very similar to Python which seems more widely used. If security is what you mainly care about though, maybe you'd just enjoy diving straight into rust rather than C++.
      - DocSavage 6y ago
        C++ is still used extensively, even for completely new projects, in computer graphics, databases, etc. Relatively new projects I’ve seen it used: TileDB, tensorstore, core Apache Arrow, etc. CUDA programming is C++ at the bleeding edge. I’m in the process of updating my C++ to C++17 and there’s definitely been a lot of changes over time in the language. I would agree that for many, they’d go with python and let others accelerate that python with underlying C/C++ they wouldn’t have to see.
- change442200 6y ago
  This is not for absolute beginners, but pure gold: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/ultimate-go-programming/9780135261651/ https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/ultimate-go-programming...
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  Google for “golang”.

aspenmayer 6y ago

Do you have a good intro to coding in Go for absolute beginners? It’s so hard to Google for Go related things, ironically.

jpxw 6y ago
Google “Golang” rather than “Go”
- aspenmayer 6y ago
  Ah, thanks. I was actually worried that it was a different, similarly named language in the same space, and the existential dread of trying to untie that Gordian knot via Google itself left me content to just make a mental note, and ask those who do know when it came up next.
mjlee 6y ago
Absolute beginniners to go or to programming in general? If it's the former, I'd recommend https://tour.golang.org https://tour.golang.org and The Go Programming Language. If it's the latter... I can't personally recommend any beginner's textbooks which are written to use go, but it might be worth looking at Head First Go, the rest of the books in the series are quite approachable.
- aspenmayer 6y ago
  That’s great, two for two! Thank you. What would you say is the best starter language these days? Java? Python? Something else like C++ or Rust? I am not a coder at all. I mangle configurations and implement functionality upon request, but I always run up against scripts and CLI and I am no expert in bash or powershell and I don’t have to quit vim. But I get by okay. Not a dig, I just admit I only know as much as I do primarily from self-learning and doing. That’s why I care to learn what I’m not seeing because I’m not able to do it yet: the code. There’s just so much to not know, especially about setups and small things that impart outsize benefits or functionality, like dotfiles for instance. All these things are so hard to learn in isolation. It’s hard to have scope and find the rails under you to know how to turn and move yourself around in the dev space, in a basic computing, nuts and bolts sense, if that makes any sense. So if you have any tips about things like that, let me know. For example: https://missing.csail.mit.edu https://missing.csail.mit.edu They even link back, how nice!
  - hnarn 6y ago
    Python is very commonly recommended as the "gateway drug" to programming, and for good reason. It's extremely well used, sought after, and easy to get into. When you feel comfortable with programming fundamentals in Python (everything from variables, functions, loops to classes and modules) I'd recommend looking into Go or Rust -- the latter is probably more of a challenge but it makes sense as a step up from Python. My extremely personal opinions about the rest of the languages you mention, and these are my personal opinions so there's no need to tell me how wrong I am because personal opinions almost always are wrong (to someone else): - Java: Highly sought after in the market but mostly found in legacy code bases, bloated (JVM) and not very well liked by developers apart from some scenarios where it's already used, or those that have been working with it for a decade. - C++: Hated by everyone except those that are already very proficient in it and is quickly being surpassed by Rust, by no means a useless language but not one that makes sense to pick up from scratch in 2020 unless you have a specific reason to.
    - aspenmayer 6y ago
      I’m more into applications of technology, and security is a focus. For instance, doesn’t meterpreter use Ruby? That didn’t make the list, but I couldn’t say why. Maybe it’s not as easy to learn? I’m just grasping at this point. Would you say it’s worth looking into C++ due to legacy codebases?
      - hnarn 6y ago
        Sure, if you want to understand stuff written in C/C++ then that's an obvious use case for learning it. The same goes for any language. Ruby isn't worse than Python by any stretch but my personal view is that it got really popular due to "Ruby on Rails", on its own it's very similar to Python which seems more widely used. If security is what you mainly care about though, maybe you'd just enjoy diving straight into rust rather than C++.
    - DocSavage 6y ago
      C++ is still used extensively, even for completely new projects, in computer graphics, databases, etc. Relatively new projects I’ve seen it used: TileDB, tensorstore, core Apache Arrow, etc. CUDA programming is C++ at the bleeding edge. I’m in the process of updating my C++ to C++17 and there’s definitely been a lot of changes over time in the language. I would agree that for many, they’d go with python and let others accelerate that python with underlying C/C++ they wouldn’t have to see.
change442200 6y ago
This is not for absolute beginners, but pure gold: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/ultimate-go-programming/9780135261651/ https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/ultimate-go-programming...
throwaway894345 6y ago
Google for “golang”.