3 ms·

I really like ML-likes, but I feel the same way about Go. I hoped for some time that a equivalent of F# would appear for Go and gain a bit of traction, as I rea

by Zababa 5y ago

I really like ML-likes, but I feel the same way about Go. I hoped for some time that a equivalent of F# would appear for Go and gain a bit of traction, as I really like algebraic data types, immutability by default and a few map/filter/reduce from time to time, but sadly that didn't happen. It's really frustrating because sum types and pattern matching would have been a good alternative to if err != nil that could be cheked by the compiler, and the language already has a more powerful switch. On the other hand, the language is nice to use, the tooling is good, and popular enough to usually have what you need.

throwaway894345 5y ago
Yep, fully agree. Unlike many MLs, Go nails syntax, tooling, runtime, ecosystem, standard library, etc but the type system could be better. In my opinion there's space for a "Rust with GC", but every time I say this the OCaml and F# people come out of the woodwork to evangelize their languages but those languages miss the mark in many important respects.
- Zababa 5y ago
  I don't fully agree about syntax. I think Go should have used the ML-style name: type. First this makes things easier to read, and second it makes things more coherant. When you declare a variable, you do either name: type = value, or name := value. This way, when you remove the type, you just fuse : and =. That's a small nitpick though. For the rest I agree. > In my opinion there's space for a "Rust with GC", but every time I say this the OCaml and F# people come out of the woodwork to evangelize their languages but those languages miss the mark in many important respects. I fully agree with this, Rust with a GC is what I've been looking for too. However as you said, F# and OCaml don't really fit the bill. Let's hope we can have something like that in the next 10 years!
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    Agreed that syntax isn't perfect (and I'd be fine with `name: type` although the current `name type` doesn't chafe me much), but it's a lot more approachable to a much wider audience (and IMO just easier to read for almost anyone regardless of background) than OCaml or Haskel or F#. > Let's hope we can have something like that in the next 10 years! Agreed. :)
- hajile 5y ago
  If Google chose StandardML instead of Go, SML would win hands down in every way. Not many people or companies have tens to hundreds of millions sitting around to build a new language and ecosystem.
  - systems 5y ago
    Not, that this matters much, probably a technicality Dart is the language google is in a way selling, as the dev language for their new mobile platform flutter Go, just happened, most available online material suggest that Go did really just happen Rob pike have his taste, and build Go, in my opinion in the spirit of C, a pragmatic rather than theoretic effort Go success, I think was not something that google really pushed for, it just happened because it seem many developer seem to prefer to use simpler languages, and deal with complexity "of using" a language, rather than learn a complex language and deal with the complexity "of learning" a language, developers are more engineers and craftsmen, rather than scientist
    - Zababa 5y ago
      This is what people often regurgitates when talking about Go but I don't agree with most of it. "simple" is relative. Clojure people love to talk about simplicity too, but for some reason I imagine most of them wouldn't agree with Go programmers on what "simple" is. SML has plenty of "simple" parts too. Sum types checked by the compiler instead of having to think about "if err != nil"? That's what I call a pragmatic choice. Immutability in most cases? Again, a pragmatic choice. Option instead of checking for nil, and having the compiler do your work? Again, a pragmatic choice. If we were talking about Haskell, I would agree, Haskellers get easily excited by academic ideas. But things like algebraic data types, pattern matching and immutability are craftsmen tool. As a proof, you can see most of these ideas in Go, but they're half-formed. Returning a result and an error is a result type, but you have to do everything manually. The "switch on steroids" in Go is a half attempt at doing serious pattern matching, type switches are a proof of that. The name of the variable is here before the name of the type, but the ":" is not here. I'm not saying we should throw everything from Go away and all start programming in SML. I'm saying that people that worked on Go were too dogmatic to include pragmatic features that would have made it a better language. You can see this easily, from Rob Pike claiming that taxonomy is the least interesting kind of science or something like that, and thus a more useful type system is unnecessary. This is dogma. Go didn't "just happen", Go had the support of Google to write a high quality and extensive standard library, and all the tooling around it. That takes a tremendous amount of time and money. SML or OCaml doesn't have that, so it's harder for them to compete. I assure you that if Go looked like a garbage collected Rust, while still having all the great tooling, the easy concurrency, the standard library and all that good stuff, its success would have been the same if not better.

by Zababa 5y ago

throwaway894345 5y ago

Yep, fully agree. Unlike many MLs, Go nails syntax, tooling, runtime, ecosystem, standard library, etc but the type system could be better. In my opinion there's space for a "Rust with GC", but every time I say this the OCaml and F# people come out of the woodwork to evangelize their languages but those languages miss the mark in many important respects.

Zababa 5y ago
I don't fully agree about syntax. I think Go should have used the ML-style name: type. First this makes things easier to read, and second it makes things more coherant. When you declare a variable, you do either name: type = value, or name := value. This way, when you remove the type, you just fuse : and =. That's a small nitpick though. For the rest I agree. > In my opinion there's space for a "Rust with GC", but every time I say this the OCaml and F# people come out of the woodwork to evangelize their languages but those languages miss the mark in many important respects. I fully agree with this, Rust with a GC is what I've been looking for too. However as you said, F# and OCaml don't really fit the bill. Let's hope we can have something like that in the next 10 years!
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  Agreed that syntax isn't perfect (and I'd be fine with `name: type` although the current `name type` doesn't chafe me much), but it's a lot more approachable to a much wider audience (and IMO just easier to read for almost anyone regardless of background) than OCaml or Haskel or F#. > Let's hope we can have something like that in the next 10 years! Agreed. :)
hajile 5y ago
If Google chose StandardML instead of Go, SML would win hands down in every way. Not many people or companies have tens to hundreds of millions sitting around to build a new language and ecosystem.
- systems 5y ago
  Not, that this matters much, probably a technicality Dart is the language google is in a way selling, as the dev language for their new mobile platform flutter Go, just happened, most available online material suggest that Go did really just happen Rob pike have his taste, and build Go, in my opinion in the spirit of C, a pragmatic rather than theoretic effort Go success, I think was not something that google really pushed for, it just happened because it seem many developer seem to prefer to use simpler languages, and deal with complexity "of using" a language, rather than learn a complex language and deal with the complexity "of learning" a language, developers are more engineers and craftsmen, rather than scientist
  - Zababa 5y ago
    This is what people often regurgitates when talking about Go but I don't agree with most of it. "simple" is relative. Clojure people love to talk about simplicity too, but for some reason I imagine most of them wouldn't agree with Go programmers on what "simple" is. SML has plenty of "simple" parts too. Sum types checked by the compiler instead of having to think about "if err != nil"? That's what I call a pragmatic choice. Immutability in most cases? Again, a pragmatic choice. Option instead of checking for nil, and having the compiler do your work? Again, a pragmatic choice. If we were talking about Haskell, I would agree, Haskellers get easily excited by academic ideas. But things like algebraic data types, pattern matching and immutability are craftsmen tool. As a proof, you can see most of these ideas in Go, but they're half-formed. Returning a result and an error is a result type, but you have to do everything manually. The "switch on steroids" in Go is a half attempt at doing serious pattern matching, type switches are a proof of that. The name of the variable is here before the name of the type, but the ":" is not here. I'm not saying we should throw everything from Go away and all start programming in SML. I'm saying that people that worked on Go were too dogmatic to include pragmatic features that would have made it a better language. You can see this easily, from Rob Pike claiming that taxonomy is the least interesting kind of science or something like that, and thus a more useful type system is unnecessary. This is dogma. Go didn't "just happen", Go had the support of Google to write a high quality and extensive standard library, and all the tooling around it. That takes a tremendous amount of time and money. SML or OCaml doesn't have that, so it's harder for them to compete. I assure you that if Go looked like a garbage collected Rust, while still having all the great tooling, the easy concurrency, the standard library and all that good stuff, its success would have been the same if not better.