4 ms·

> doesn't seem to be making much traction What do you mean by this? By what metrics and what would qualify as making traction? Many companies use Go and many p

by lghh 4y ago

> doesn't seem to be making much traction What do you mean by this? By what metrics and what would qualify as making traction? Many companies use Go and many prominent and widely used open source projects are written in Go. > it's Bell Labs heritage I have never met a person (in person, offline) who has cared about this at all. > pretty syntax One of the most common things you hear as a knock against Go are things that explicitly do not lead to "pretty" syntax, such as its error handling. Overall, your comment confuses me.

AnimalMuppet 4y ago
> > it's Bell Labs heritage > I have never met a person (in person, offline) who has cared about this at all. People care about it because the language has the Bell Labs "feel". They don't care about it the way a dog breeder would care about a dog's ancestry. (And of those who care about the "feel", some view it as a positive, others as a negative...)
- lghh 4y ago
  > People care about it because the language has the Bell Labs "feel" I'm not attacking, I am honestly asking: What does that mean? That it feels C-like? Or something different? A lot of languages are C-like in syntax, so Go is not exactly unique in that aspect.
  - morelisp 4y ago
    The belief that you can always improve some code by making it do less. Contrast with e.g. Haskell which is based on the belief you can always improve some code by making it more general, or Rust on the belief you can improve it by making it safer, or Java that you can improve it by breaking it down into smaller chunks. Languages carry aesthetic values. Most are aren't committed to them above literally all else - we all want our code to be somewhat simple and general and safe and isolated etc - but other than the most kitchen sink-y of them (C++, JavaScript) they have priorities among those which show through. (And even in those you can find some, muddled as they are.)
  - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
    The difference between C and Pascal was a certain pragmatism. Pascal (at least the original) could make it hard or impossible to do certain things. C let you do things, even things that the language designers hadn't thought of. The difference was that C was written by people who were trying to write an OS, and they had to create a language that was able to handle all the odd things involved, like writing directly to hardware. Pascal really didn't want you to do that. I'm not saying that Go lets you talk directly to hardware - I don't know whether it does or not. But I think that Go has the "get out of the programmers way and let them write code" approach more than, say, Haskell, or even Rust. That (plus the C-like syntax) probably is the Bell Labs feel.

by lghh 4y ago

AnimalMuppet 4y ago

> > it's Bell Labs heritage > I have never met a person (in person, offline) who has cared about this at all. People care about it because the language has the Bell Labs "feel". They don't care about it the way a dog breeder would care about a dog's ancestry. (And of those who care about the "feel", some view it as a positive, others as a negative...)

lghh 4y ago
> People care about it because the language has the Bell Labs "feel" I'm not attacking, I am honestly asking: What does that mean? That it feels C-like? Or something different? A lot of languages are C-like in syntax, so Go is not exactly unique in that aspect.
- morelisp 4y ago
  The belief that you can always improve some code by making it do less. Contrast with e.g. Haskell which is based on the belief you can always improve some code by making it more general, or Rust on the belief you can improve it by making it safer, or Java that you can improve it by breaking it down into smaller chunks. Languages carry aesthetic values. Most are aren't committed to them above literally all else - we all want our code to be somewhat simple and general and safe and isolated etc - but other than the most kitchen sink-y of them (C++, JavaScript) they have priorities among those which show through. (And even in those you can find some, muddled as they are.)
- AnimalMuppet 4y ago
  The difference between C and Pascal was a certain pragmatism. Pascal (at least the original) could make it hard or impossible to do certain things. C let you do things, even things that the language designers hadn't thought of. The difference was that C was written by people who were trying to write an OS, and they had to create a language that was able to handle all the odd things involved, like writing directly to hardware. Pascal really didn't want you to do that. I'm not saying that Go lets you talk directly to hardware - I don't know whether it does or not. But I think that Go has the "get out of the programmers way and let them write code" approach more than, say, Haskell, or even Rust. That (plus the C-like syntax) probably is the Bell Labs feel.