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I roll my eyes when someone claims "I learned Go over the weekend". It's one thing to learn basic syntax, and completely another to learn the customs of your ne

by papito 5y ago

I roll my eyes when someone claims "I learned Go over the weekend". It's one thing to learn basic syntax, and completely another to learn the customs of your new environment so most can understand what you are doing. Go is one of the hardest languages to learn. First of all, some concepts in it are very different from "mainstream" languages, and it takes a while to get used to them. Simple things that exist in almost every other ecosystem can be absent in Go. Want to run setup code before your test suite? You on your own, buddy. And, oh yeah, 2/3 of your code will be `if err` statements, because exceptions are passé. I learned it by seeking out good Go codebases, which are incredibly rare. Hashi's Terraform comes to mind. Infamously, the early Kubernetes code was a nightmare because it lifted and shifted Java idioms and that was at the company that invented the Language. Or at Uber, where they passed on Go's native goroutines and channels in favor of homegrown concurrency, for SOME reason: https://eng.uber.com/go-geofence-highest-query-per-second-service/ https://eng.uber.com/go-geofence-highest-query-per-second-se... All this to show that Go is not a simple language to do well, so let's dispense with that myth. It has its uses, but having done it, I would never recommend Go for a greenfield project in my place of work - there are very few rules that come with it, and it requires tons of coordination and discipline among a team. And if you have to work with 2 or 3 other people who have strong opinions on how to do things in Go, watch out.

_ph_ 5y ago
I have not claimed you can "learn Go over the weekend". Not in a deeper sense where you could expect to design large projects and take the right decisions. But you can get a pretty good basic Go intro in a few days and be pretty productive after that. It isn't that different from most languages and has a rather small core. Of course, it helps if you have Scheme experience, to understand all the power of high order functions etc.
Someone 5y ago
IMO, “learning the language” and “getting used to it” are different things. The first is a purely theoretical exercise, the second a applied one that involves not only the language but also its ecosystem (implementation(s), library of functions and tooling)
- papito 5y ago
  I am not sure if we are agreeing or not, but I feel like we are. I think when people refer to "learning" a language, they mean they actually know how to use it properly. Learning the syntax does not count - that is just trivia any one of us can do.
  - Someone 5y ago
    (Nitpick: I assume you mean learning both the syntax and the semantics. That isn’t always trivial, as some languages have features one may not have seen before) I think we mostly agree, too. However, I distinguish between learning a programming language and learning to use it. I learn many programming languages without ever writing any line of code in them. Once you’ve seen enough languages, if you combine that with reading about other people’s experience with working with the language, that can give you a decent idea about how the latter is without having to spend the effort (without being as good as doing it yourself, of course. Apart from “which one is the brake pedal”, I think I know how to drive a car, but I also know I can’t drive a car) That’s why I posted my first comment: the poster you replied to may share my opinion between “learning” and “learning to use”.

by papito 5y ago

_ph_ 5y ago

I have not claimed you can "learn Go over the weekend". Not in a deeper sense where you could expect to design large projects and take the right decisions. But you can get a pretty good basic Go intro in a few days and be pretty productive after that. It isn't that different from most languages and has a rather small core. Of course, it helps if you have Scheme experience, to understand all the power of high order functions etc.

Someone 5y ago

IMO, “learning the language” and “getting used to it” are different things. The first is a purely theoretical exercise, the second a applied one that involves not only the language but also its ecosystem (implementation(s), library of functions and tooling)

papito 5y ago
I am not sure if we are agreeing or not, but I feel like we are. I think when people refer to "learning" a language, they mean they actually know how to use it properly. Learning the syntax does not count - that is just trivia any one of us can do.
- Someone 5y ago
  (Nitpick: I assume you mean learning both the syntax and the semantics. That isn’t always trivial, as some languages have features one may not have seen before) I think we mostly agree, too. However, I distinguish between learning a programming language and learning to use it. I learn many programming languages without ever writing any line of code in them. Once you’ve seen enough languages, if you combine that with reading about other people’s experience with working with the language, that can give you a decent idea about how the latter is without having to spend the effort (without being as good as doing it yourself, of course. Apart from “which one is the brake pedal”, I think I know how to drive a car, but I also know I can’t drive a car) That’s why I posted my first comment: the poster you replied to may share my opinion between “learning” and “learning to use”.