5 ms·

Is go what saved the project or good technical leadership and cultural changes in the thinking of design and architecture of software?

taspeotis 6y ago
The title is “Go helped save” not “Go saved.”
- acdha 6y ago
  Yes, but what little detail there is sounds like something which almost any language could have done acceptably. I'd believe that Go would require a few less servers than, say, async Python but the title really should have been something like “A little architecture goes a long way”. The approach they described is no doubt considerably more polished but people built websites using the same techniques back in the 90s to avoid SPOFs and then XHR made that even easier to do robustly. To be clear: this isn't to say that their work wasn't good but really seconding the point they're making about how the original design was the wrong architecture for a public website and there's no easy way to band-aid around that.
  - dekhn 6y ago
    This was my complaint about a go port at my employer. There was an old C++ service that was really slow, so the Go advocate made a bug-for-bug compatible version of it in Go, and they migrated over to that system. A lot of work went into touting how awesome it was, until I asked "so, you could have done this in C++, or really any other compiled language?" and they said "yeah, I just wanted to help build enthusiam for go. there's nothing specific about the language that made the resulting system any better"
    - acdha 6y ago
      There's always a tension between maintaining an existing codebase and trying something new but in that case I'd personally jump on a Go codebase instead of C/C++ in a heartbeat just for the maintainability improvements. There is a meaningful difference between “can a turing-complete language do this?” and “how much time will you spend dealing with avoidable problems or overhead?” and in the case of unsafe languages I find the arguments relatively compelling for picking anything safer to use in practice.
    - vmception 6y ago
      and obviously they can now get hired for Go and you can't. what's the complaint, stop falling for these pedantic loops and win the game
      - ravi-delia 6y ago
        The complaint is that as long as you're transparently wasting employer resources on a resume gambit you may as well just embezzle anyway and avoid inconveniencing your coworkers.
        vmception 6y ago
        no no they're helping build enthusiasm!
        tolbish 6y ago
        Evangelization is a paid gig at times.
      - dekhn 6y ago
        Neither that code author nor I has any trouble being employed. I learned go and then stopped using it because (in my field) C++ and Python are what is used most commonly.
benlivengood 6y ago
https://medium.com/the-u-s-digital-service/mikey-dickerson-to-sxsw-why-we-need-you-in-government-f31dab3263a0 https://medium.com/the-u-s-digital-service/mikey-dickerson-t... from the guy on the front lines. He has fascinating stories.
- oh_sigh 6y ago
  Ohh, can he tell us about "Project Birmingham"? That would be a fun story. > A secret effort to influence the 2017 Senate election in Alabama used tactics inspired by Russian disinformation teams, including the creation of fake accounts to deliver misleading messages on Facebook to hundreds of thousands of voters to help elect Democrat Doug Jones in the deeply red state, according to a document obtained by The Washington Post. https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation-politics/secret-campaign-to-use-russian-inspired-tactics-in-2017-ala-election-stirs-anxiety-for-democrats/ https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation-politics/se... Of course, Mikey is an extremely hands on guy, and loves to dig into problems he's tasked with. But he threw all those personality traits all out the window when Reid Hoffman gave him almost a million dollars, and he (supposedly) had no idea what the money was being spent on.
  - ineedasername 6y ago
    Project Birmingham is legitimately a concerning incident in dirty politics, but the inflammatory tone of your post makes it very easy to downvote you based on the appearance of flame bait for anyone who isn't already familiar with Project Birmingham.

taspeotis 6y ago

The title is “Go helped save” not “Go saved.”

acdha 6y ago
Yes, but what little detail there is sounds like something which almost any language could have done acceptably. I'd believe that Go would require a few less servers than, say, async Python but the title really should have been something like “A little architecture goes a long way”. The approach they described is no doubt considerably more polished but people built websites using the same techniques back in the 90s to avoid SPOFs and then XHR made that even easier to do robustly. To be clear: this isn't to say that their work wasn't good but really seconding the point they're making about how the original design was the wrong architecture for a public website and there's no easy way to band-aid around that.
- dekhn 6y ago
  This was my complaint about a go port at my employer. There was an old C++ service that was really slow, so the Go advocate made a bug-for-bug compatible version of it in Go, and they migrated over to that system. A lot of work went into touting how awesome it was, until I asked "so, you could have done this in C++, or really any other compiled language?" and they said "yeah, I just wanted to help build enthusiam for go. there's nothing specific about the language that made the resulting system any better"
  - acdha 6y ago
    There's always a tension between maintaining an existing codebase and trying something new but in that case I'd personally jump on a Go codebase instead of C/C++ in a heartbeat just for the maintainability improvements. There is a meaningful difference between “can a turing-complete language do this?” and “how much time will you spend dealing with avoidable problems or overhead?” and in the case of unsafe languages I find the arguments relatively compelling for picking anything safer to use in practice.
  - vmception 6y ago
    and obviously they can now get hired for Go and you can't. what's the complaint, stop falling for these pedantic loops and win the game
    - ravi-delia 6y ago
      The complaint is that as long as you're transparently wasting employer resources on a resume gambit you may as well just embezzle anyway and avoid inconveniencing your coworkers.
      - vmception 6y ago
        no no they're helping build enthusiasm!
        tolbish 6y ago
        Evangelization is a paid gig at times.
    - dekhn 6y ago
      Neither that code author nor I has any trouble being employed. I learned go and then stopped using it because (in my field) C++ and Python are what is used most commonly.

benlivengood 6y ago

https://medium.com/the-u-s-digital-service/mikey-dickerson-to-sxsw-why-we-need-you-in-government-f31dab3263a0 https://medium.com/the-u-s-digital-service/mikey-dickerson-t... from the guy on the front lines. He has fascinating stories.

oh_sigh 6y ago
Ohh, can he tell us about "Project Birmingham"? That would be a fun story. > A secret effort to influence the 2017 Senate election in Alabama used tactics inspired by Russian disinformation teams, including the creation of fake accounts to deliver misleading messages on Facebook to hundreds of thousands of voters to help elect Democrat Doug Jones in the deeply red state, according to a document obtained by The Washington Post. https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation-politics/secret-campaign-to-use-russian-inspired-tactics-in-2017-ala-election-stirs-anxiety-for-democrats/ https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation-politics/se... Of course, Mikey is an extremely hands on guy, and loves to dig into problems he's tasked with. But he threw all those personality traits all out the window when Reid Hoffman gave him almost a million dollars, and he (supposedly) had no idea what the money was being spent on.
- ineedasername 6y ago
  Project Birmingham is legitimately a concerning incident in dirty politics, but the inflammatory tone of your post makes it very easy to downvote you based on the appearance of flame bait for anyone who isn't already familiar with Project Birmingham.