8 ms·

I mean, all programming language communities are partial to their language, but among Go there seems to be an unusual tolerance for disagreement and discussion

I mean, all programming language communities are partial to their language, but among Go there seems to be an unusual tolerance for disagreement and discussion of language issues compared to most other programming languages. But yeah, when you come in guns blazing talking about how certain language features are "shit" and there's no possibility of elegance, people are rightly going to think you're not there for any sort of productive conversation. For example, I regularly have productive conversations with people in the community about error handling and sum types and generics, including my criticism for the way Go does some of those features. A little civility goes a long way, and this isn't particular to the Go community or even programming language communities in general. Note that there definitely are PL communities that generally can't handle any criticism irrespective of civility, but the Go community isn't among them. Indeed, in my experience, Go's critics are very often much more zealous than its proponents.

burnished 5y ago
Huh, I had sort of found the opposite, that the Go community I had interacted with was more aggro and prone to offense. I'm forming this opinion from the reddit and the discord though, so if there is another community you favor I'd genuinely love to hear about it.
- kodah 5y ago
  Last I checked there GoNuts on Libera, there's the go nuts mailing list, and there's that Slack. I've seen members of all of the above complain and publicly vye for features and fixes.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  I've had very helpful experiences on Discord (but I don't frequent it). Reddit is Reddit. GitHub (e.g., issue tracker) has been very productive. The mailing list is also productive.
- lakomen 5y ago
  I concur. I was used to a professional tone, then joined discord-go. Showed some of my online code to receive a "shit structure" response by some anime girl avatar youngling. When I started explaining how I don't think docker is the way to go I was met with passive aggressive behavior and plain false responses trying to justify its use. But Go's discord server wasn't to only bad experience. Angular might as well have been called Heil Angular. I worked with it for 2 years and found vue to be more productive. But they didn't want to hear cross worlds experience. Instead they insisted that I had no clue and after a while of back n forth played the "we're the moderators so we're right" card. Then big daddy server owner later stepped up and in the end I was banned, because despite the truth that vue was more productive only their agenda mattered. I have also met hostility in discord's vue server. Insults by by an official name there for saying that it wasn't a good move to require me or anyone joining to provide a phone number for account verification purposes. All in all discord seem to have the immature unprofessional crowd. It's a gaming chat system after all. Reddit Go is not as hostile but not very informed either. Although that's not true for all participants. Compare Reddit to the quality of Go nuts, there is a difference. But at least Reddit is a more or less open forum, where discord is hidden and a walled pff property.
  - sph 5y ago
    You can't base your opinion on anything, particularly computer languages, off of your Discord experience, come on. The Discord demographic is teenagers and young adults, that's the last place where you'd find professional and mature advice about a programming language. I mean, even Reddit is better, and it still is a cesspool.
    - iudqnolq 5y ago
      I've found the rust discord nice and respectful (although I'm also a young adult). I also don't think [edit: PL] reddit is particularly a cesspool, at least compared to HN.
      - arccy 5y ago
        rust discord is at least (semi?)official go discord isn't listed anywhere on official sites
mjr00 5y ago
> Note that there definitely are PL communities that generally can't handle any criticism irrespective of civility, but the Go community isn't among them. Indeed, in my experience, Go's critics are very often much more zealous than its proponents. This is because Go is a programming language for people who don't care about programming languages. I mean this in the most positive way possible. If you're using Go, it's because you care about the end result of what you're building, usually a backend service or command-line tooling, far more than the code that was used to create it. Go is not a language where you come up with clever syntax to solve your problem. Go is not a language that makes you feel smart when you write it. Go is not a fun language to program in. Go is a language that gets out of your way, encourages you to solve your problem in the most boring way possible (usually with a lot of for loops) with a predefined level of safety (i.e. static typing, explicit error handling with the `error` type, etc). It's a language for building bridges, not creating masterpieces. People who are passionate about programming languages would never like Go in the first place, so you don't get too many zealots to sing its praises.
- jhoechtl 5y ago
  Well put and I agree with most points but > Go is not a fun language to program in Not having to think about how something should be done in the most elegant way, instead focus on the problem at hand is a lot of "fun"
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    Agreed. This was the only nit I was inclined to pick as well. I have a lot of fun writing Go, because it gets out of my way.
    - afdbcreid 5y ago
      But programming languages should get on your way while you're doing things wrong. Go does not. To be fare, most mainstream languages do not: I think Rust is the best in this thing, other languages often aren't. But Go is by far the worst of all, because of its striving for "simplicity".

burnished 5y ago

Huh, I had sort of found the opposite, that the Go community I had interacted with was more aggro and prone to offense. I'm forming this opinion from the reddit and the discord though, so if there is another community you favor I'd genuinely love to hear about it.

kodah 5y ago
Last I checked there GoNuts on Libera, there's the go nuts mailing list, and there's that Slack. I've seen members of all of the above complain and publicly vye for features and fixes.
throwaway894345 5y ago
I've had very helpful experiences on Discord (but I don't frequent it). Reddit is Reddit. GitHub (e.g., issue tracker) has been very productive. The mailing list is also productive.
lakomen 5y ago
I concur. I was used to a professional tone, then joined discord-go. Showed some of my online code to receive a "shit structure" response by some anime girl avatar youngling. When I started explaining how I don't think docker is the way to go I was met with passive aggressive behavior and plain false responses trying to justify its use. But Go's discord server wasn't to only bad experience. Angular might as well have been called Heil Angular. I worked with it for 2 years and found vue to be more productive. But they didn't want to hear cross worlds experience. Instead they insisted that I had no clue and after a while of back n forth played the "we're the moderators so we're right" card. Then big daddy server owner later stepped up and in the end I was banned, because despite the truth that vue was more productive only their agenda mattered. I have also met hostility in discord's vue server. Insults by by an official name there for saying that it wasn't a good move to require me or anyone joining to provide a phone number for account verification purposes. All in all discord seem to have the immature unprofessional crowd. It's a gaming chat system after all. Reddit Go is not as hostile but not very informed either. Although that's not true for all participants. Compare Reddit to the quality of Go nuts, there is a difference. But at least Reddit is a more or less open forum, where discord is hidden and a walled pff property.
- sph 5y ago
  You can't base your opinion on anything, particularly computer languages, off of your Discord experience, come on. The Discord demographic is teenagers and young adults, that's the last place where you'd find professional and mature advice about a programming language. I mean, even Reddit is better, and it still is a cesspool.
  - iudqnolq 5y ago
    I've found the rust discord nice and respectful (although I'm also a young adult). I also don't think [edit: PL] reddit is particularly a cesspool, at least compared to HN.
    - arccy 5y ago
      rust discord is at least (semi?)official go discord isn't listed anywhere on official sites

mjr00 5y ago

> Note that there definitely are PL communities that generally can't handle any criticism irrespective of civility, but the Go community isn't among them. Indeed, in my experience, Go's critics are very often much more zealous than its proponents. This is because Go is a programming language for people who don't care about programming languages. I mean this in the most positive way possible. If you're using Go, it's because you care about the end result of what you're building, usually a backend service or command-line tooling, far more than the code that was used to create it. Go is not a language where you come up with clever syntax to solve your problem. Go is not a language that makes you feel smart when you write it. Go is not a fun language to program in. Go is a language that gets out of your way, encourages you to solve your problem in the most boring way possible (usually with a lot of for loops) with a predefined level of safety (i.e. static typing, explicit error handling with the `error` type, etc). It's a language for building bridges, not creating masterpieces. People who are passionate about programming languages would never like Go in the first place, so you don't get too many zealots to sing its praises.

jhoechtl 5y ago
Well put and I agree with most points but > Go is not a fun language to program in Not having to think about how something should be done in the most elegant way, instead focus on the problem at hand is a lot of "fun"
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  Agreed. This was the only nit I was inclined to pick as well. I have a lot of fun writing Go, because it gets out of my way.
  - afdbcreid 5y ago
    But programming languages should get on your way while you're doing things wrong. Go does not. To be fare, most mainstream languages do not: I think Rust is the best in this thing, other languages often aren't. But Go is by far the worst of all, because of its striving for "simplicity".