3 ms·

That's the Go party line but not really true. Counter-example: The Go GC is tuned for HTTP servers at latency sensitive companies like Google. It therefore pri

That's the Go party line but not really true. Counter-example: The Go GC is tuned for HTTP servers at latency sensitive companies like Google. It therefore prioritizes latency over throughput to an astonishing degree, which means it is extremely bad at batch jobs - like compilers. What language is the Go compiler written in? Go. This isn't fixable by simply writing the code differently. What you're talking about is in the limit equivalent to not using a GCd language at all, and you can do that with Java too via the Unsafe allocators. But it's not a great idea to do that too much, because then you may as well just bite the bullet and write C++. Java doesn't actually need lots of GC tuning parameters. Actually most of the time you can ignore them, because the defaults balance latency and throughput for something reasonable for the vast majority of companies that aren't selling ad clicks. But, if you want, you can tell the JVM more about your app to get better results like whether it's latency or throughput sensitive. The parameters are there mostly to help people with unusual or obscure workloads where Go simply gives up and says "if you have this problem, Go is not for you".

delian66 5y ago
> it is extremely bad at batch jobs - like compilers. > What language is the Go compiler written in? Go. I do not see what are you trying to say? The Go compiler is plenty fast in my experience, especially compared to say `javac`. The startup time of `javac` (and most java programs) is atrocious.
- native_samples 5y ago
  You can't compare throughput of two totally different programs to decide whether an individual subsystem is faster. The Go compiler is "fast" because it doesn't do much optimization, and because the language is designed to be simple to compile at the cost of worse ergonomics. Why can't it do much optimization? Partly due to their marketing pitch around fast compilers and partly because Go code runs slowly, because it's using a GC designed to minimize pause times at the cost of having lots of them. The algorithmic tradeoffs here are really well known and there are throughput comparisons of similar programs written in similar styles that show Go falling well behind. As it should, given the choices made in its implementation, in particular the "only one GC knob" choice.

delian66 5y ago

> it is extremely bad at batch jobs - like compilers. > What language is the Go compiler written in? Go. I do not see what are you trying to say? The Go compiler is plenty fast in my experience, especially compared to say `javac`. The startup time of `javac` (and most java programs) is atrocious.

native_samples 5y ago
You can't compare throughput of two totally different programs to decide whether an individual subsystem is faster. The Go compiler is "fast" because it doesn't do much optimization, and because the language is designed to be simple to compile at the cost of worse ergonomics. Why can't it do much optimization? Partly due to their marketing pitch around fast compilers and partly because Go code runs slowly, because it's using a GC designed to minimize pause times at the cost of having lots of them. The algorithmic tradeoffs here are really well known and there are throughput comparisons of similar programs written in similar styles that show Go falling well behind. As it should, given the choices made in its implementation, in particular the "only one GC knob" choice.