6 ms·

From r60 to Go 1

97 points by BarkMore 15y ago

peregrine 15y ago
Wow these are significant changes! The entire development process has been cleaned up significantly, and not having to use Makefiles is a significant improvement, as well as default error type. Go team is dedicated to developers and developer process and it will pay off.
- sho_hn 15y ago
  Agreed, this sort of attention to tooling and the more menial parts of the development experience is sorely amiss among many other contenders, and definitely makes Go appear more interesting to me.
- draven 15y ago
  go build reminds me of ghc --make, it's great. That and Go reaching a 1.0 release may help me get it considered for some projects at work.
duaneb 15y ago
Looks like Go is cleaning up. Love the language, but I won't commit to writing heavy-duty code in it until it either has sensible union support or sensible generic support. The type system is just too weak right now.
- bwarp 15y ago
  I actually thought that to start with but when you get used to the frankly wierd type system, it actually works extremely well without generics (bear in mind I use C# which is heavily generic programming). When you approach the problems with a Go mindset, I don't think I've found a single case that needed generic types. I'm not sure of the value of unions now or ever as it brings what is effectively a compiler decision into user space and allows very unsafe, architecture dependent code to be accidentally written.
  - ootachi 15y ago
    Discriminated unions are neither architecture-dependent nor unsafe.
    - bwarp 15y ago
      A "tagged union" which is what I assume you mean is usually abstracted as a native type (struct) in other langauges (Go included). C gives you architecture level access to it. Go leaves it to the VM to decide.
listic 15y ago
What's wrong with makefiles and why is new Go convention better?
- enneff 15y ago
  All the information required to build a go package is in the source. why write and maintain Make files when they are unnecessary? The Go project is all about making programming simpler.
- batista 15y ago
  Horrible syntax. Manual labor to write them that a build system could automate for you. Not convenient enough for large projects, so people write makefile-making tools anyway. It turns out a mess.
bwarp 15y ago
Fantastic. I was hoping Makefiles would go away. I hate writing them! More detailed info here: http://weekly.golang.org/doc/go1.html http://weekly.golang.org/doc/go1.html
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 15y ago
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zyfo 15y ago
Anyone using or planning on using Go in the near future? For what? It looks intriguing but I can't think of any obvious immediate applications (I'm sure there are plenty, I just don't see them).
- m0th87 15y ago
  Used it for my Master's thesis research. It turned out pretty well; Go hits a sweet spot between systems programming and higher-level languages. Anecdotally, it performed about 2/3 as fast as C in stress tests, which was easily worth the productivity boost (especially GC). I chose it because the native code interface is so nice, so it's trivial to use libraries like ZeroMQ without the overhead you'd see out of something like JNI.
- k-a-r 15y ago
  soon to be launch a vertical content repository, purely GO code (leveldb inspired database with fulltext, ranking and highly scalable, crawler, webserver, load balancer, etc.) with only dependency being libxml2.
- unoti 15y ago
  I'm using it to build a world server for a multiplayer game. A lot of people suggest Scala/Java, Erlang, or Node.js for this, but I'm using Go. Go has a good, efficient memory model that lets me simulate a heck of a lot more of my world per megabyte of RAM. In today's world of hosting, that translates into a huge impact on how many dollars per user/hour we need to pay to run our game. That can have a direct translation into what kinds of business models can, and cannot, work for a game design. I've actually written rudimentary versions of my world server in all of the languages I mentioned above, and Go is by far the best in terms of what I can do with memory. Go makes it very easy to communicate between nodes, almost as easy as what you can do in Erlang. Doozer is a library in Go for coordination of the activities of many machines, a lot like Zookeeper. Between Doozer and Netchan, Go is a really solid choice for making a system like a world simulator that needs to be distributed among many computers. Go is also better than Node.js for things that require manipulating binary data. For example, I have some communications back and forth where the server is in Go, the client is in Python, and they talk using Protocol Buffers. Javascript doesn't do binary (at all? not very well?) like Go or Java can. There is an experimental protocol buffer library in Javascript, but in general Javascript needs to kind of bend over backwards to work with binary data. It's possible to do it, but it's not natural or efficient. In general, if you care about memory usage, working with binary data, tons of simultaneous threads/actors, building distributed systems, then Go is a great choice, especially if you want to do more than one of the above.
fennecfoxen 15y ago
So to be perfectly clear, this is a project named Go but it's not Google Go? It used to be named r60? It has something to do with building things?
- mbrubeck 15y ago
  Go 1 is a release of the Go programming language developed at Google. The summary of http://weekly.golang.org/doc/go1.html http://weekly.golang.org/doc/go1.html has details.
  - fennecfoxen 15y ago
    Thank you for your informative and clarifying information!
hungrycoder 15y ago
I am excited by golang and plan to start hacking with it. Here's why: 1. language designed with good intentions (http://golang.org/doc/go_faq.html#What_is_the_purpose_of_the_project http://golang.org/doc/go_faq.html#What_is_the_purpose_of_the...) 2. designed and built by a group of veteran system researchers and engineers (ie. not javascript) 3. implementation open sourced from the start: http://code.google.com/p/go/source/browse http://code.google.com/p/go/source/browse 4. not overdesigned (http://golang.org/doc/go_faq.html#Design http://golang.org/doc/go_faq.html#Design) 5. a real and practical abstraction for multicore computing (http://www.usingcsp.com/cspbook.pdf http://www.usingcsp.com/cspbook.pdf) Its success, like most languages, will depend on library support. Here's hoping it catches on.
- jbarham 15y ago
  > Its success, like most languages, will depend on library support. By that measure Go's standard library is very extensive: http://weekly.golang.org/pkg/ http://weekly.golang.org/pkg/ There are also a lot of 3rd party packages (e.g., http://godashboard.appspot.com/package http://godashboard.appspot.com/package) most of which can be installed in a single command. For my purposes, Go's standard library has proved as complete as Python's (http://docs.python.org/library/index.html http://docs.python.org/library/index.html) and includes some things that the Python standard library doesn't (e.g., crypto, graphics), all the more impressive IMO considering how relatively young Go is.
cpeterso 15y ago
Are any Google projects currently using or evaluating Go for production?
- enneff 15y ago
  Yep, there are some Go services at Google that handle a staggering amount of traffic. I hope to be able to discuss one of the services publicly later this year. (Yeah, confidentiality is a drag.)
- jbarham 15y ago
  There is an experimental release of Go for Google's App Engine: http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/go/overview.html http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/go/overview.html. It's mature enough that it was used in production to generate the Thanksgiving 2011 Google Doodle: http://blog.golang.org/2011/12/from-zero-to-go-launching-on-google.html http://blog.golang.org/2011/12/from-zero-to-go-launching-on-.... They Go App Engine team have also very recently pushed out beta releases that are tracking the weekly Go releases leading up the final Go 1 release, so I think it's safe to say that Go will be officially supported on App Engine not too long after Go 1 is released.
kristianp 15y ago
Note that Go 1 hasn't been released yet, but can be previewed from the weekly tag.

97 points by BarkMore 15y ago

Wow these are significant changes! The entire development process has been cleaned up significantly, and not having to use Makefiles is a significant improvement, as well as default error type. Go team is dedicated to developers and developer process and it will pay off.

sho_hn 15y ago
Agreed, this sort of attention to tooling and the more menial parts of the development experience is sorely amiss among many other contenders, and definitely makes Go appear more interesting to me.
draven 15y ago
go build reminds me of ghc --make, it's great. That and Go reaching a 1.0 release may help me get it considered for some projects at work.

duaneb 15y ago

Looks like Go is cleaning up. Love the language, but I won't commit to writing heavy-duty code in it until it either has sensible union support or sensible generic support. The type system is just too weak right now.

bwarp 15y ago
I actually thought that to start with but when you get used to the frankly wierd type system, it actually works extremely well without generics (bear in mind I use C# which is heavily generic programming). When you approach the problems with a Go mindset, I don't think I've found a single case that needed generic types. I'm not sure of the value of unions now or ever as it brings what is effectively a compiler decision into user space and allows very unsafe, architecture dependent code to be accidentally written.
- ootachi 15y ago
  Discriminated unions are neither architecture-dependent nor unsafe.
  - bwarp 15y ago
    A "tagged union" which is what I assume you mean is usually abstracted as a native type (struct) in other langauges (Go included). C gives you architecture level access to it. Go leaves it to the VM to decide.

listic 15y ago

What's wrong with makefiles and why is new Go convention better?

enneff 15y ago
All the information required to build a go package is in the source. why write and maintain Make files when they are unnecessary? The Go project is all about making programming simpler.
batista 15y ago
Horrible syntax. Manual labor to write them that a build system could automate for you. Not convenient enough for large projects, so people write makefile-making tools anyway. It turns out a mess.

bwarp 15y ago

Fantastic. I was hoping Makefiles would go away. I hate writing them! More detailed info here: http://weekly.golang.org/doc/go1.html http://weekly.golang.org/doc/go1.html

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

zyfo 15y ago

Anyone using or planning on using Go in the near future? For what? It looks intriguing but I can't think of any obvious immediate applications (I'm sure there are plenty, I just don't see them).

m0th87 15y ago
Used it for my Master's thesis research. It turned out pretty well; Go hits a sweet spot between systems programming and higher-level languages. Anecdotally, it performed about 2/3 as fast as C in stress tests, which was easily worth the productivity boost (especially GC). I chose it because the native code interface is so nice, so it's trivial to use libraries like ZeroMQ without the overhead you'd see out of something like JNI.
k-a-r 15y ago
soon to be launch a vertical content repository, purely GO code (leveldb inspired database with fulltext, ranking and highly scalable, crawler, webserver, load balancer, etc.) with only dependency being libxml2.
unoti 15y ago
I'm using it to build a world server for a multiplayer game. A lot of people suggest Scala/Java, Erlang, or Node.js for this, but I'm using Go. Go has a good, efficient memory model that lets me simulate a heck of a lot more of my world per megabyte of RAM. In today's world of hosting, that translates into a huge impact on how many dollars per user/hour we need to pay to run our game. That can have a direct translation into what kinds of business models can, and cannot, work for a game design. I've actually written rudimentary versions of my world server in all of the languages I mentioned above, and Go is by far the best in terms of what I can do with memory. Go makes it very easy to communicate between nodes, almost as easy as what you can do in Erlang. Doozer is a library in Go for coordination of the activities of many machines, a lot like Zookeeper. Between Doozer and Netchan, Go is a really solid choice for making a system like a world simulator that needs to be distributed among many computers. Go is also better than Node.js for things that require manipulating binary data. For example, I have some communications back and forth where the server is in Go, the client is in Python, and they talk using Protocol Buffers. Javascript doesn't do binary (at all? not very well?) like Go or Java can. There is an experimental protocol buffer library in Javascript, but in general Javascript needs to kind of bend over backwards to work with binary data. It's possible to do it, but it's not natural or efficient. In general, if you care about memory usage, working with binary data, tons of simultaneous threads/actors, building distributed systems, then Go is a great choice, especially if you want to do more than one of the above.

fennecfoxen 15y ago

So to be perfectly clear, this is a project named Go but it's not Google Go? It used to be named r60? It has something to do with building things?

mbrubeck 15y ago
Go 1 is a release of the Go programming language developed at Google. The summary of http://weekly.golang.org/doc/go1.html http://weekly.golang.org/doc/go1.html has details.
- fennecfoxen 15y ago
  Thank you for your informative and clarifying information!

hungrycoder 15y ago

I am excited by golang and plan to start hacking with it. Here's why: 1. language designed with good intentions (http://golang.org/doc/go_faq.html#What_is_the_purpose_of_the_project http://golang.org/doc/go_faq.html#What_is_the_purpose_of_the...) 2. designed and built by a group of veteran system researchers and engineers (ie. not javascript) 3. implementation open sourced from the start: http://code.google.com/p/go/source/browse http://code.google.com/p/go/source/browse 4. not overdesigned (http://golang.org/doc/go_faq.html#Design http://golang.org/doc/go_faq.html#Design) 5. a real and practical abstraction for multicore computing (http://www.usingcsp.com/cspbook.pdf http://www.usingcsp.com/cspbook.pdf) Its success, like most languages, will depend on library support. Here's hoping it catches on.

jbarham 15y ago
> Its success, like most languages, will depend on library support. By that measure Go's standard library is very extensive: http://weekly.golang.org/pkg/ http://weekly.golang.org/pkg/ There are also a lot of 3rd party packages (e.g., http://godashboard.appspot.com/package http://godashboard.appspot.com/package) most of which can be installed in a single command. For my purposes, Go's standard library has proved as complete as Python's (http://docs.python.org/library/index.html http://docs.python.org/library/index.html) and includes some things that the Python standard library doesn't (e.g., crypto, graphics), all the more impressive IMO considering how relatively young Go is.

cpeterso 15y ago

Are any Google projects currently using or evaluating Go for production?

enneff 15y ago
Yep, there are some Go services at Google that handle a staggering amount of traffic. I hope to be able to discuss one of the services publicly later this year. (Yeah, confidentiality is a drag.)
jbarham 15y ago
There is an experimental release of Go for Google's App Engine: http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/go/overview.html http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/go/overview.html. It's mature enough that it was used in production to generate the Thanksgiving 2011 Google Doodle: http://blog.golang.org/2011/12/from-zero-to-go-launching-on-google.html http://blog.golang.org/2011/12/from-zero-to-go-launching-on-.... They Go App Engine team have also very recently pushed out beta releases that are tracking the weekly Go releases leading up the final Go 1 release, so I think it's safe to say that Go will be officially supported on App Engine not too long after Go 1 is released.

kristianp 15y ago

Note that Go 1 hasn't been released yet, but can be previewed from the weekly tag.