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Yeah I was at a startup where maybe 10% of engineering had used go before and 20% had used Java before (it was a PHP monolith so most people were PHP developers

Yeah I was at a startup where maybe 10% of engineering had used go before and 20% had used Java before (it was a PHP monolith so most people were PHP developers). The Java code that was written was pretty awful (I was hired probably due to my java experience, so I had a decent idea of good java). However, the Go services were actually really good. There is something about having a simple language that works really well for backend CRUD services.

nogridbag 4y ago
I think the main difference is there's just an order of magnitude more awful Java devs than Go developers due to Java being the most popular backend language for N years. If the timeline was flipped and Java was the new language on the block while Go had been around for 25 years, I bet you'd see the quality of Java code was vastly superior simply due to Java attracting passionate developers interested in learning new technology. I still see Java devs with 15-20 years "experience" coding like 1st year CS students. It really wouldn't matter what language they were coding in.
rob-olmos 4y ago
What sticks out most for the Java code being pretty awful? Was the PHP code just as awful too in similar aspects?
kaba0 4y ago
Go is not really an easier language than Java, though.
- throwaway894345 4y ago
  Back in 2012 I was considerably better-versed in Java (it was the main language for my CS education and a bunch of my hobby stuff). Still, I ended up picking Go because it was so much easier--no need to deal with Maven or Gradle or the alternatives, no need to pick a testing framework or a test runner, no need to configure CI jobs to publish documentation or source code packages, no need to run some external web server process, no need to worry about runtime dependencies (including the JVM itself), etc. No need to navigate an ecosystem (including stdlib) riddled with inheritance and other antipatterns, etc. No need to get a master's degree in tuning the JVM. Text editor plugins just worked. `gofmt` existed and was ubiquitous. The language itself was far smaller and it had native, idiomatic value types from inception!. Everything about Go was just so much easier than Java.

nogridbag 4y ago

I think the main difference is there's just an order of magnitude more awful Java devs than Go developers due to Java being the most popular backend language for N years. If the timeline was flipped and Java was the new language on the block while Go had been around for 25 years, I bet you'd see the quality of Java code was vastly superior simply due to Java attracting passionate developers interested in learning new technology. I still see Java devs with 15-20 years "experience" coding like 1st year CS students. It really wouldn't matter what language they were coding in.

rob-olmos 4y ago

What sticks out most for the Java code being pretty awful? Was the PHP code just as awful too in similar aspects?

kaba0 4y ago

Go is not really an easier language than Java, though.

throwaway894345 4y ago
Back in 2012 I was considerably better-versed in Java (it was the main language for my CS education and a bunch of my hobby stuff). Still, I ended up picking Go because it was so much easier--no need to deal with Maven or Gradle or the alternatives, no need to pick a testing framework or a test runner, no need to configure CI jobs to publish documentation or source code packages, no need to run some external web server process, no need to worry about runtime dependencies (including the JVM itself), etc. No need to navigate an ecosystem (including stdlib) riddled with inheritance and other antipatterns, etc. No need to get a master's degree in tuning the JVM. Text editor plugins just worked. `gofmt` existed and was ubiquitous. The language itself was far smaller and it had native, idiomatic value types from inception!. Everything about Go was just so much easier than Java.