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> The result is its widespread adoption in its niche And everywhere else, unfortunately. Go is an overreaction in the opposite direction. In 2010 I can't agre

by spion 4y ago

> The result is its widespread adoption in its niche And everywhere else, unfortunately. Go is an overreaction in the opposite direction. In 2010 I can't agree that there is a good reason to make a language without generics and reasonable error handling from the very start.

klodolph 4y ago
Seems like a lot of people disagreed, because Go is definitely a “successful” language. Kind of getting sick of hearing these same complaints, over and over, to be honest.
- josephcsible 4y ago
  Go is only successful because Google spent so much money propping it up by paying people to write stuff in it. It has so many major flaws that it would have had no chance of taking off otherwise. If Google had spent the same amount of money on Haskell instead, it'd be even more popular than Go is today.
  - HeyImAlex 4y ago
    Go is very simple, provides decent static type safety, has a nice concurrency model, and compiles to fast static binaries across all major platforms. People choose it all the time because it’s a great choice. A wild number of popular open source tools are written in go, very few of them created by google. As someone who wrote go for many years I think you’re overstating how limiting it’s “major flaws” are. And fwiw go ranks much higher than haskell on stack overflow’s annual developer survey.
    - epgui 4y ago
      Everything you just said either applies equally to Haskell, or is a cultural factor mostly explained by what the parent comment wrote.
      - spion 4y ago
        Haskell probably has a much better concurrency model too with STM being quite awesome
  - fiveg 4y ago
    This a pretty hot take. I'm in the early stages of learning go. So far I like it a lot, but I come from the perspective of a data person who only knows python. I want to learn a compiled language, what would you suggest instead?
    - josephcsible 4y ago
      Rust.
    - epgui 4y ago
      Haskell, Idris or Rust! I share the largely negative opinion of Go. (my background is mostly python, R, javascript, clojure)
  - Tozen 4y ago
    I'm kind of with you about Google being heavily responsible to the level of which Go became an success, but that has been the case (backed by large companies) for many popular programming languages such as C, C++, Java, Rust, etc... It helps, but not every corporate backed language is successful or makes it to the top 20. I don't completely buy the argument that a Google backed Haskell would have been as popular as Go. Readability (which is subjective), familiarity (often C is the reference), and the ease of which the language can be learned are still major factors in widespread acceptance.

by spion 4y ago

klodolph 4y ago

Seems like a lot of people disagreed, because Go is definitely a “successful” language. Kind of getting sick of hearing these same complaints, over and over, to be honest.

josephcsible 4y ago
Go is only successful because Google spent so much money propping it up by paying people to write stuff in it. It has so many major flaws that it would have had no chance of taking off otherwise. If Google had spent the same amount of money on Haskell instead, it'd be even more popular than Go is today.
- HeyImAlex 4y ago
  Go is very simple, provides decent static type safety, has a nice concurrency model, and compiles to fast static binaries across all major platforms. People choose it all the time because it’s a great choice. A wild number of popular open source tools are written in go, very few of them created by google. As someone who wrote go for many years I think you’re overstating how limiting it’s “major flaws” are. And fwiw go ranks much higher than haskell on stack overflow’s annual developer survey.
  - epgui 4y ago
    Everything you just said either applies equally to Haskell, or is a cultural factor mostly explained by what the parent comment wrote.
    - spion 4y ago
      Haskell probably has a much better concurrency model too with STM being quite awesome
- fiveg 4y ago
  This a pretty hot take. I'm in the early stages of learning go. So far I like it a lot, but I come from the perspective of a data person who only knows python. I want to learn a compiled language, what would you suggest instead?
  - josephcsible 4y ago
    Rust.
  - epgui 4y ago
    Haskell, Idris or Rust! I share the largely negative opinion of Go. (my background is mostly python, R, javascript, clojure)
- Tozen 4y ago
  I'm kind of with you about Google being heavily responsible to the level of which Go became an success, but that has been the case (backed by large companies) for many popular programming languages such as C, C++, Java, Rust, etc... It helps, but not every corporate backed language is successful or makes it to the top 20. I don't completely buy the argument that a Google backed Haskell would have been as popular as Go. Readability (which is subjective), familiarity (often C is the reference), and the ease of which the language can be learned are still major factors in widespread acceptance.