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> My disappointment with Rob Pike's Go language is that the rest of the world has moved on from ASCII, but he did not. Um, the Go reference explicitly states t

by lucsky 5y ago

> My disappointment with Rob Pike's Go language is that the rest of the world has moved on from ASCII, but he did not. Um, the Go reference explicitly states that "Source code is Unicode text encoded in UTF-8" [1], so I'm not sure what the hell this guy is talking about. The language itself maybe? Well contrary to the author of the article I'm really no fan of Rob Pike and I think he's a massive arrogant prick, but in this particular case he was absolutely right to be pragmatic for the language syntax and let people be stupid enough to use inaccessible characters in their source code. Which, come to think of it, actually flies in the face of the root principle of Go as stated by Pike himself, which is to shield dumb rookie Google developers from their supposed inexperience. [1] https://golang.org/ref/spec#Source_code_representation https://golang.org/ref/spec#Source_code_representation

ggm 5y ago
This feels a bit gratuitously rude. He has strong opinions, and literally decades of experience. He is said to dislike time wasters. As one of a very small set of people who built much of the modern development stack from the ground up, it would be tedious in the extreme to have to deal with every headstrong tyro determined to make their (likely highly pedestrian, repetitive) point. Never met him, never really dealt with him, don't see why you feel you need to denigrate him.
- lucsky 5y ago
  > This feels a bit gratuitously rude Agreed, and I 100% believe that meeting him in person would most likely change my mind. I also 100% believe that he has every right to be an "arrogant prick" for all his contributions and achievements to the field. But that doesn't make him any less insufferable, unfortunately.
  - nsajko 5y ago
    You're missing the point. You're just throwing insults around (again in this comment), without even letting HN readers know what are you referring to. Why do you think Rob Pike is an arrogant prick, or insufferable? Also note that HN has guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - lucsky 5y ago
      > Why do you think Rob Pike is an arrogant prick, or insufferable? Well alright then. How about when he called syntax highlighting "juvenile spitzensparkenblinkelichtzen for kids"? How is that not condescending to pretty much 99% of his peers? And again, how about when he said that the Go language has been designed to allow poor dumb Google engineers to not shoot themselves in the foot with languages for adults like C++? Rob Pike might be able to design three new languages between breakfast and lunch, but yes, I will definitely have a hard time being "kind and not snarky" (see, I read the guidelines ;)) when his name shows up.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - dang 5y ago
        Please don't.
      - slownews45 5y ago
        Good lord. Pike's developed a language designed to be easy "to understand and easy to adopt." "It must be familiar, roughly C-like. Programmers working at Google are early in their careers and are most familiar with procedural languages, particularly from the C family. The need to get programmers productive quickly in a new language means that the language cannot be too radical." – Rob Pike They are not researchers, they are engineers. Do I think Pike could develop a language for researches filled with special unicode characters that do magic things? Of course. But this practical approach to a language doesn't make him a giant prick. As someone who has played with "Fancy" languages you get tired of them (and the people using them) after a while.
- vanderZwan 5y ago
  I understand where you're coming from, but in the case of Rob Pike I get the impression that he enjoys having the reputation of a contrarian, and is not above trolling once in a while. Just look at the history section of the Mark V. Shaney wiki page. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_V._Shaney https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_V._Shaney
  - ggm 5y ago
    That's a bit different to how he has to deal with contemporary compsci nerds. And, it's very old. We're talking about a 40 year old story. I attended my share of Unix User Group meetings. All of the names had people ride point for them at drink time, adoration is tedious.
  - josephg 5y ago
    I've met him. His desk was a couple meters away from mine while I was working on Google Wave, and he was working on early versions of Go. Over 6 months or so I had a lot of little interactions with him. He's an interesting guy. He's quiet and hard working, but he has some great stories. And lots of strong opinions that he's spent a long time thinking about. I agree with the GP. Calling someone you've never met "a massive prick" with no evidence is rude and pretentious. Especially given how much he's contributed to computing. He is a bit of a contrarian - but so what? All the interesting people are. There's a lot of daylight between someone being "a bit of a contrarian" and being "a massive prick". One does not imply the other. You don't have to like Go. I sure don't. But have some respect for the people who have poured their lives and souls into making computing what it is today. Our industry wouldn't exist without them.
vyskocilm 5y ago
It's even more funny, given the fact Rob Pike co invented UTF-8 with Ken Thompson. So he must know a thing or two about Unicode. Not using Unicode for Go syntax is a great thing.
- vitiral 5y ago
  Both of which coinvented Golang, haha
Noe2097 5y ago
> I am not sure what the hell this guy is talking about Have a look at the APL language the author is mentioning, you will see you missed the point of his article. The point of the author is not just about having more characters supported for identifiers or within strings (as the part of the golang specifications you are pointing to). He has more operators and related constructions in mind, which could benefit from more elaborate characters, e.g. the whole set of mathematical operations. The issue I see however in his reasoning,is that precisely in the case of APL, dedicated keyboards had been built for it. The reason for limiting character set to ASCII, is there immediate accessibility on everybody's keyboard

by lucsky 5y ago

ggm 5y ago

This feels a bit gratuitously rude. He has strong opinions, and literally decades of experience. He is said to dislike time wasters. As one of a very small set of people who built much of the modern development stack from the ground up, it would be tedious in the extreme to have to deal with every headstrong tyro determined to make their (likely highly pedestrian, repetitive) point. Never met him, never really dealt with him, don't see why you feel you need to denigrate him.

lucsky 5y ago
> This feels a bit gratuitously rude Agreed, and I 100% believe that meeting him in person would most likely change my mind. I also 100% believe that he has every right to be an "arrogant prick" for all his contributions and achievements to the field. But that doesn't make him any less insufferable, unfortunately.
- nsajko 5y ago
  You're missing the point. You're just throwing insults around (again in this comment), without even letting HN readers know what are you referring to. Why do you think Rob Pike is an arrogant prick, or insufferable? Also note that HN has guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - lucsky 5y ago
    > Why do you think Rob Pike is an arrogant prick, or insufferable? Well alright then. How about when he called syntax highlighting "juvenile spitzensparkenblinkelichtzen for kids"? How is that not condescending to pretty much 99% of his peers? And again, how about when he said that the Go language has been designed to allow poor dumb Google engineers to not shoot themselves in the foot with languages for adults like C++? Rob Pike might be able to design three new languages between breakfast and lunch, but yes, I will definitely have a hard time being "kind and not snarky" (see, I read the guidelines ;)) when his name shows up.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - dang 5y ago
      Please don't.
    - slownews45 5y ago
      Good lord. Pike's developed a language designed to be easy "to understand and easy to adopt." "It must be familiar, roughly C-like. Programmers working at Google are early in their careers and are most familiar with procedural languages, particularly from the C family. The need to get programmers productive quickly in a new language means that the language cannot be too radical." – Rob Pike They are not researchers, they are engineers. Do I think Pike could develop a language for researches filled with special unicode characters that do magic things? Of course. But this practical approach to a language doesn't make him a giant prick. As someone who has played with "Fancy" languages you get tired of them (and the people using them) after a while.
vanderZwan 5y ago
I understand where you're coming from, but in the case of Rob Pike I get the impression that he enjoys having the reputation of a contrarian, and is not above trolling once in a while. Just look at the history section of the Mark V. Shaney wiki page. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_V._Shaney https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_V._Shaney
- ggm 5y ago
  That's a bit different to how he has to deal with contemporary compsci nerds. And, it's very old. We're talking about a 40 year old story. I attended my share of Unix User Group meetings. All of the names had people ride point for them at drink time, adoration is tedious.
- josephg 5y ago
  I've met him. His desk was a couple meters away from mine while I was working on Google Wave, and he was working on early versions of Go. Over 6 months or so I had a lot of little interactions with him. He's an interesting guy. He's quiet and hard working, but he has some great stories. And lots of strong opinions that he's spent a long time thinking about. I agree with the GP. Calling someone you've never met "a massive prick" with no evidence is rude and pretentious. Especially given how much he's contributed to computing. He is a bit of a contrarian - but so what? All the interesting people are. There's a lot of daylight between someone being "a bit of a contrarian" and being "a massive prick". One does not imply the other. You don't have to like Go. I sure don't. But have some respect for the people who have poured their lives and souls into making computing what it is today. Our industry wouldn't exist without them.

vyskocilm 5y ago

It's even more funny, given the fact Rob Pike co invented UTF-8 with Ken Thompson. So he must know a thing or two about Unicode. Not using Unicode for Go syntax is a great thing.

vitiral 5y ago
Both of which coinvented Golang, haha

Noe2097 5y ago

> I am not sure what the hell this guy is talking about Have a look at the APL language the author is mentioning, you will see you missed the point of his article. The point of the author is not just about having more characters supported for identifiers or within strings (as the part of the golang specifications you are pointing to). He has more operators and related constructions in mind, which could benefit from more elaborate characters, e.g. the whole set of mathematical operations. The issue I see however in his reasoning,is that precisely in the case of APL, dedicated keyboards had been built for it. The reason for limiting character set to ASCII, is there immediate accessibility on everybody's keyboard