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The more I've used golang, the more I've had a creeping suspicion that 'the emperor has no clothes'. Go plays at being a system programming language, but it's

The more I've used golang, the more I've had a creeping suspicion that 'the emperor has no clothes'. Go plays at being a system programming language, but it's really not. It's peers and competitors are languages like java and c#, not rust or c++. When you look at it from that lens, it fares badly. There's just a clunky feel that permeates the entire language, and it's creators seem to have no interest in addressing it. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Golang is popular because it was written by Thompson, and embraced by google. You have a whole load of devs that will simply embrace anything with such a pedigree because it 'must be state of the art'

AnimalMuppet 5y ago
> You have a whole load of devs that will simply embrace anything with such a pedigree because it 'must be state of the art' That seems rather dismissive of people. The devs I know are not sheep. Now if you had said that we have a whole load of managers that will simply embrace anything because it 'must be state of the art'...
chakkepolja 5y ago
> You have a whole load of devs that will simply embrace anything with such a pedigree because it 'must be state of the art' Dude, at the end of the day I want something done. And golang has good libraries (esp network stuff), good IDE support, and compiles to single binary that's reasonably fast and easy to deploy. Show me another language that covers all these.
- wing-_-nuts 5y ago
  The java and .net ecosystem come to mind if you're willing to have the java or .net runtime on your container (I never understood the big deal about binaries outside of embedded or other space constrained environments)
  - chakkepolja 5y ago
    Command line tools etc.. for some types of servers too, Go has the advantage of less memory usage and faster startup. That said, for internal web apps or websites etc.., PHP / Django / spring boot whatever sails the boat.
    - wing-_-nuts 5y ago
      The startup time has interesting implications for serverless. That was the big draw of golang for me. Cold boot time for a golang function is like half a second max.
      - chakkepolja 5y ago
        For CLI tools as well. And Golang stdlib feels more batteries included and straight to the point than Java counterparts, in many niches.
JyB 5y ago
You're living in a bubble. People get reliable stuff done in the real world with it. And fast.
- azth 5y ago
  It's not mutually exclusive with what he wrote. I have used golang for several years now and he's on point 100%
- wavemode 5y ago
  One could say the same about plenty of awful programming languages. If the blog post was titled "Go is unusable in production" then sure, he'd be wrong. But he's simply criticizing the language design. (Mostly, I might add, in the hopes that it will someday improve; the author writes Go professionally, he's not just some random hater.)

AnimalMuppet 5y ago

> You have a whole load of devs that will simply embrace anything with such a pedigree because it 'must be state of the art' That seems rather dismissive of people. The devs I know are not sheep. Now if you had said that we have a whole load of managers that will simply embrace anything because it 'must be state of the art'...

chakkepolja 5y ago

> You have a whole load of devs that will simply embrace anything with such a pedigree because it 'must be state of the art' Dude, at the end of the day I want something done. And golang has good libraries (esp network stuff), good IDE support, and compiles to single binary that's reasonably fast and easy to deploy. Show me another language that covers all these.

wing-_-nuts 5y ago
The java and .net ecosystem come to mind if you're willing to have the java or .net runtime on your container (I never understood the big deal about binaries outside of embedded or other space constrained environments)
- chakkepolja 5y ago
  Command line tools etc.. for some types of servers too, Go has the advantage of less memory usage and faster startup. That said, for internal web apps or websites etc.., PHP / Django / spring boot whatever sails the boat.
  - wing-_-nuts 5y ago
    The startup time has interesting implications for serverless. That was the big draw of golang for me. Cold boot time for a golang function is like half a second max.
    - chakkepolja 5y ago
      For CLI tools as well. And Golang stdlib feels more batteries included and straight to the point than Java counterparts, in many niches.

JyB 5y ago

You're living in a bubble. People get reliable stuff done in the real world with it. And fast.

azth 5y ago
It's not mutually exclusive with what he wrote. I have used golang for several years now and he's on point 100%
wavemode 5y ago
One could say the same about plenty of awful programming languages. If the blog post was titled "Go is unusable in production" then sure, he'd be wrong. But he's simply criticizing the language design. (Mostly, I might add, in the hopes that it will someday improve; the author writes Go professionally, he's not just some random hater.)