4 ms·

Golang is great for small code bases, in a UNIX world where each program do only one thing, this is perfectly fine. But once the code base grows, it easily bec

by linkdd 6y ago

Golang is great for small code bases, in a UNIX world where each program do only one thing, this is perfectly fine. But once the code base grows, it easily becomes a tangled mess. My biggest con for Go would be the project directory structure. At the toplevel of a project, I like to have only "src", "tests", "docs", "examples" and eventually "containers" if I provide Docker images. With go, it seems that everything should be at the toplevel (or maybe I haven't seen nicely structured projects yet?).

antoinealb 6y ago
Could this be an issue with Go's built in build system rather than go the language ? At work I use go with Bazel and found it okay with regard to source layout, similar to my experience with c++. I don't have experience with go outside of Bazel though.
- linkdd 6y ago
  When I try to decide if i want to use a language, I look at its ecosystem. It may have the best features in the world, but if the ecosystem is not there, it will be a pain to use it. On the opposite, a language can have the worst features and a great ecosystem, for example Python is slow but as great scientific tools, or Javascript has a weird "typing system" but has tons of tools in every domain to make the best of it. I don't know Bazel though, I'll take a look at it, thanks!
arp242 6y ago
You can store Go files in src/ if you really want, nothing really stopping you, but it's not the usual approach, no. Tests are usually stored next to the actual implementations rather than a tests/ directory. In which directory to store files is an incredibly small and minor detail though.
- linkdd 6y ago
  > nothing really stopping you, but it's not the usual approach In my experience, if you open-source a project, it better have to follow conventions. Following conventions makes sure someone else can read your code easily. > In which directory to store files is an incredibly small and minor detail though. Yeah it's a small detail, but it is important to me to not get lost in a directory tree. Random example taken from a github search: https://github.com/gofiber/fiber https://github.com/gofiber/fiber Is it really ok to have that much source code at the toplevel? Is the code architecture clear at a glance? For me, it is not, and I'll have to put in extra work (I'm lazy) to understand the code and how it works. I don't mind doing that for other projects, but for my projects as I work on them daily, it becomes a pain very quickly.
carwyn 6y ago
This pattern or close variants or subsets are fairly common: https://github.com/golang-standards/project-layout https://github.com/golang-standards/project-layout

by linkdd 6y ago

antoinealb 6y ago

Could this be an issue with Go's built in build system rather than go the language ? At work I use go with Bazel and found it okay with regard to source layout, similar to my experience with c++. I don't have experience with go outside of Bazel though.

linkdd 6y ago
When I try to decide if i want to use a language, I look at its ecosystem. It may have the best features in the world, but if the ecosystem is not there, it will be a pain to use it. On the opposite, a language can have the worst features and a great ecosystem, for example Python is slow but as great scientific tools, or Javascript has a weird "typing system" but has tons of tools in every domain to make the best of it. I don't know Bazel though, I'll take a look at it, thanks!

arp242 6y ago

You can store Go files in src/ if you really want, nothing really stopping you, but it's not the usual approach, no. Tests are usually stored next to the actual implementations rather than a tests/ directory. In which directory to store files is an incredibly small and minor detail though.

linkdd 6y ago
> nothing really stopping you, but it's not the usual approach In my experience, if you open-source a project, it better have to follow conventions. Following conventions makes sure someone else can read your code easily. > In which directory to store files is an incredibly small and minor detail though. Yeah it's a small detail, but it is important to me to not get lost in a directory tree. Random example taken from a github search: https://github.com/gofiber/fiber https://github.com/gofiber/fiber Is it really ok to have that much source code at the toplevel? Is the code architecture clear at a glance? For me, it is not, and I'll have to put in extra work (I'm lazy) to understand the code and how it works. I don't mind doing that for other projects, but for my projects as I work on them daily, it becomes a pain very quickly.

carwyn 6y ago

This pattern or close variants or subsets are fairly common: https://github.com/golang-standards/project-layout https://github.com/golang-standards/project-layout