6 ms·

> I had heard of Go for many years, but never stuck with it; it gets constant negative press on Hacker News/Reddit I think on Hacker News it's really fashionab

> I had heard of Go for many years, but never stuck with it; it gets constant negative press on Hacker News/Reddit I think on Hacker News it's really fashionable to criticize Go, and this has led to a culture where Go gets significantly more negativity than it deserves. As technologists, one of our most important jobs is to see through such fashions and judge languages/tools/technologies based on their actual merit. While gauging sentiment about things on a forum like Hacker News is generally really helpful, it should not be the main basis of our decisions.

tempest_ 4y ago
Go is getting used in places where Java would have been used in the past. Java complaints go down, Go complaints go up.
- Xeoncross 4y ago
  If Go hadn't come along, I would be using and complaining about C# or Java for sure.
erik_seaberg 4y ago
Some of the HN audience had already been reading PG’s essays for years, and our expectations of new languages were shaped by http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html.
notduncansmith 4y ago
“There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses.” - Bjarne Stroustrup
- tialaramex 4y ago
  I own a T-shirt which says "Haters gonna make some good points". People do indeed only complain about the things which are used and not the things they don't care about because nobody uses them. But, we should not think this means the complaints just signify success. People are complaining because they care, but also because it's not good, or it's not as good as it should be.
zozbot234 4y ago
Go is a vastly preferable language to Python or Ruby for most things. The "negative press" is quite overstated, it does get plenty of favorable advocacy as well.
- metadat 4y ago
  Use an appropriate tool for the job, Python is useful for tons of things that would be a nightmare to pull off in golang, and vice versa.
  - suremarc 4y ago
    Indeed, try doing any sort of data analysis in Go, it's maddeningly verbose.
37ef_ced3 4y ago
As an engineer who uses Go and appreciates it as a replacement for most purposes where you might use C or C++, the complaints just seem bizarre. You've got people who argue against explicit error checking and people who don't understand the important role of nil pointers and people who don't see the massive net win of garbage collection in concurrent programs, and so on. Endlessly. It feels like a waste of time defending the language when the people criticizing it seem to hold such a vastly different point of view. It's like trying to convince people that Natural Born Killers is a good movie or that Primus makes good music. There's an unbridgeable chasm between you and the people you're trying to convince.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- frazbin 4y ago
  > people who.. don't understand the important role of nil pointers ... I guess you're right; I really do not understand
- LtWorf 4y ago
  But C++ had generics ages ago already… You never used those?
- obviouslynotme 4y ago
  Go has always been a Java, C#, Python, and Ruby killer. It has not and never will be a C or C++ killer. C is the language of libraries and embedded, neither of which Go is good for. C++ is the language of large systems that need extreme control over resource allocation. Go is not good for this either.
  - wizofaus 4y ago
    Is Go really killing C# though? I've rewritten Go components in C# (the initial version only had basic functionality requirements, but as they expanded, Go made less and less sense given the rest of our codebase), but can't readily imagine wanting to rewrite C# in Go. Maybe once they add proper exceptions...
goodpoint 4y ago
The very opposite. Go and Rust are constantly on HN and get tons of praise. They are both overhyped here.

tempest_ 4y ago

Go is getting used in places where Java would have been used in the past. Java complaints go down, Go complaints go up.

Xeoncross 4y ago
If Go hadn't come along, I would be using and complaining about C# or Java for sure.

erik_seaberg 4y ago

Some of the HN audience had already been reading PG’s essays for years, and our expectations of new languages were shaped by http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html.

notduncansmith 4y ago

“There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses.” - Bjarne Stroustrup

tialaramex 4y ago
I own a T-shirt which says "Haters gonna make some good points". People do indeed only complain about the things which are used and not the things they don't care about because nobody uses them. But, we should not think this means the complaints just signify success. People are complaining because they care, but also because it's not good, or it's not as good as it should be.

zozbot234 4y ago

Go is a vastly preferable language to Python or Ruby for most things. The "negative press" is quite overstated, it does get plenty of favorable advocacy as well.

metadat 4y ago
Use an appropriate tool for the job, Python is useful for tons of things that would be a nightmare to pull off in golang, and vice versa.
- suremarc 4y ago
  Indeed, try doing any sort of data analysis in Go, it's maddeningly verbose.

37ef_ced3 4y ago

As an engineer who uses Go and appreciates it as a replacement for most purposes where you might use C or C++, the complaints just seem bizarre. You've got people who argue against explicit error checking and people who don't understand the important role of nil pointers and people who don't see the massive net win of garbage collection in concurrent programs, and so on. Endlessly. It feels like a waste of time defending the language when the people criticizing it seem to hold such a vastly different point of view. It's like trying to convince people that Natural Born Killers is a good movie or that Primus makes good music. There's an unbridgeable chasm between you and the people you're trying to convince.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
frazbin 4y ago
> people who.. don't understand the important role of nil pointers ... I guess you're right; I really do not understand
LtWorf 4y ago
But C++ had generics ages ago already… You never used those?
obviouslynotme 4y ago
Go has always been a Java, C#, Python, and Ruby killer. It has not and never will be a C or C++ killer. C is the language of libraries and embedded, neither of which Go is good for. C++ is the language of large systems that need extreme control over resource allocation. Go is not good for this either.
- wizofaus 4y ago
  Is Go really killing C# though? I've rewritten Go components in C# (the initial version only had basic functionality requirements, but as they expanded, Go made less and less sense given the rest of our codebase), but can't readily imagine wanting to rewrite C# in Go. Maybe once they add proper exceptions...

goodpoint 4y ago

The very opposite. Go and Rust are constantly on HN and get tons of praise. They are both overhyped here.