5 ms·

I just don't see the issue with Go. After dealing with inscrutable errors in some python code that interfaces with OpenSSL. Or dealing with impossible to trace

by cglan 4y ago

I just don't see the issue with Go. After dealing with inscrutable errors in some python code that interfaces with OpenSSL. Or dealing with impossible to trace errors in Spring Boot. Or Javascript? An absolute nightmare from start to finish. There's something extremely nice to get an error, place a breakpoint and trace exactly (even if it's a third party library) that error is happening. I will take all the footguns in the world for that ability. Plus in general the tooling is just amazing. I know there is other Unix tooling out there but I'm sorry, they kinda suck and are terrible to use. They're for the type of person who can use vim with their eyes closed and unfortunately that's not me. The other footguns he mentioned? Valid. A linter will catch a chunk of them though. I just generally don't think they matter half the time. I think of it like the iPhone. It's a pleasure to use like 80% of the time maybe 85% and 10% it feels hacky and terrible to get something working and 5% you just can't or shouldn't do it. So for the 80% use case (backend crud apps or backend web apis) I'd take Go every time. Plus it compiles almost instantly versus multi minute turnaround times in a lot of other languages.

noisy_boy 4y ago
> Or dealing with impossible to trace errors in Spring Boot. Spring Boot is not Java. You can debug Java just as easily. On the upside, you can probably get the same stuff done in probably one third less code + use the vast ecosystem. On the downside, compilation may be a bit slower and you don't get a nice little executable out of the box. I wrote a tool in Golang and while it did everything as advertised, the boilerplate just bogged me down. Any new changes is just so much more LOC compared to Java (or Python or Rust...). To be clear, I would prefer Java or Rust compared to Python any day. Either way, I just don't want to write so much verbose code anymore.
- kaba0 4y ago
  I seriously doubt that Go would compile faster than Java. Like, neither does any reasonable amount of optimization, and I have never heard Java considered slow in compile time. Sure, one can do some very cryptic module-graph with their chosen build tool, but otherwise it should be as fast as it gets.
- vbezhenar 4y ago
  How is Spring Boot not Java? Spring Boot is a simple Java library.
  - guipsp 4y ago
    Spring boot is not, in any way shape or form, a "simple" java "library". Not only is it a complex framework, it also uses features very few java programmers are exposed to, such as runtime code generation.
    - vbezhenar 4y ago
      You can use runtime code generation with mere java.lang.reflect.Proxy. Yes, Spring is slightly more powerful than that, but it's not something magical. Runtime code generation is a simple concept.
- cglan 4y ago
  I don’t think I’ve ever seen Java used in isolation without spring boot
  - japhib 4y ago
    This comment is hilarious ^
  - Sindisil 4y ago
    Y'all need to get out more often! ;) Yes, Spring Boot is very popular, but there is a whole world of Java outside Spring, even if you confine yourself to just web apps (which is far from the only domain in which Java is used).
  - erik_seaberg 4y ago
    It’s worth remembering that Spring Boot didn’t exist for the first nineteen years we used Java.
  - nevi-me 4y ago
    Not a CS, but a damn good technical accountant and well self-taught developer. I led a team that wrote an accounting & reporting software for a specific technical problem. We had an architect who only knew Spring, and hasn't been out there pretty much in a decade. I clashed severely with him, to the point where he made an arrogant argument about something he was clearly wrong with. He said "I bet my salary that you're wrong" in front of people. I bet mine too, and the following day I demonstrated that he was wrong. I gave him my bank account (it was pay day). It was a hard bet to lose, so I said he didn't need to pay it, and I asked him to be removed from the team (because he showed that he wouldn't learn). We went on to build the system without Spring, without TomCat and with more freedom to write SAL where an ORM couldn't solve the problem better. Interestingly, we used grpc between the front-end and the backend JVM microservices. As other people say, check out projects in GitHub. Look at what new Java, Kotlin, Scala projects look like. There's a lot of interesting stuff in JVM-land that don't touch Spring. Interestingly on the software that we wrote, compute was the biggest bottleneck. I rewrote some parts in Rust, but ended up canning the work because nobody else would be able or willing to touch the code.

by cglan 4y ago

noisy_boy 4y ago

> Or dealing with impossible to trace errors in Spring Boot. Spring Boot is not Java. You can debug Java just as easily. On the upside, you can probably get the same stuff done in probably one third less code + use the vast ecosystem. On the downside, compilation may be a bit slower and you don't get a nice little executable out of the box. I wrote a tool in Golang and while it did everything as advertised, the boilerplate just bogged me down. Any new changes is just so much more LOC compared to Java (or Python or Rust...). To be clear, I would prefer Java or Rust compared to Python any day. Either way, I just don't want to write so much verbose code anymore.

kaba0 4y ago
I seriously doubt that Go would compile faster than Java. Like, neither does any reasonable amount of optimization, and I have never heard Java considered slow in compile time. Sure, one can do some very cryptic module-graph with their chosen build tool, but otherwise it should be as fast as it gets.
vbezhenar 4y ago
How is Spring Boot not Java? Spring Boot is a simple Java library.
- guipsp 4y ago
  Spring boot is not, in any way shape or form, a "simple" java "library". Not only is it a complex framework, it also uses features very few java programmers are exposed to, such as runtime code generation.
  - vbezhenar 4y ago
    You can use runtime code generation with mere java.lang.reflect.Proxy. Yes, Spring is slightly more powerful than that, but it's not something magical. Runtime code generation is a simple concept.
cglan 4y ago
I don’t think I’ve ever seen Java used in isolation without spring boot
- japhib 4y ago
  This comment is hilarious ^
- Sindisil 4y ago
  Y'all need to get out more often! ;) Yes, Spring Boot is very popular, but there is a whole world of Java outside Spring, even if you confine yourself to just web apps (which is far from the only domain in which Java is used).
- erik_seaberg 4y ago
  It’s worth remembering that Spring Boot didn’t exist for the first nineteen years we used Java.
- nevi-me 4y ago
  Not a CS, but a damn good technical accountant and well self-taught developer. I led a team that wrote an accounting & reporting software for a specific technical problem. We had an architect who only knew Spring, and hasn't been out there pretty much in a decade. I clashed severely with him, to the point where he made an arrogant argument about something he was clearly wrong with. He said "I bet my salary that you're wrong" in front of people. I bet mine too, and the following day I demonstrated that he was wrong. I gave him my bank account (it was pay day). It was a hard bet to lose, so I said he didn't need to pay it, and I asked him to be removed from the team (because he showed that he wouldn't learn). We went on to build the system without Spring, without TomCat and with more freedom to write SAL where an ORM couldn't solve the problem better. Interestingly, we used grpc between the front-end and the backend JVM microservices. As other people say, check out projects in GitHub. Look at what new Java, Kotlin, Scala projects look like. There's a lot of interesting stuff in JVM-land that don't touch Spring. Interestingly on the software that we wrote, compute was the biggest bottleneck. I rewrote some parts in Rust, but ended up canning the work because nobody else would be able or willing to touch the code.