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There's a lot of misinformation, bad arguments and bad conclusions in this post. Let's pick it apart. > Go is stable. But, past isn't a guarantee of the futu

There's a lot of misinformation, bad arguments and bad conclusions in this post. Let's pick it apart. > Go is stable. But, past isn't a guarantee of the future. It was stable before, but who's to say it will be in the future? The fact that it's "owned" by a single entity should make you scared that it wont, because the whim of that entity is what can change any property of the language. Additionally, Go has no standard, no alternative implementations to speak of. All of this should have you concerned for the future (but you seem to ignore the obvious dangers). > It works as advertised. It's the opposite. Languages with single (or one primary) implementation advertise how they work. Go is implement first document later language. The public discussion is for show because public doesn't control how things are being implemented. The Go dev. team may listen to everyone's opinion, nod in agreement, and do something else entirely, and nobody will hold them responsible for the discrepancy. > the language is maintainable. By who? How did you come to this conclusion? There's only evidence to the contrary of your argument. There isn't any other organization that's interested in maintaining Go if Google were to go away. At least nobody expressed such an intention publicly. > Languages don't have to continuously evolve to remain viable. This is demonstrably false. Hardware changes, operating system interfaces change. If you don't keep up with these changes, eventually your language becomes irrelevant. To further illustrate this point: today, versions of Python 3.7 and older cannot be built from source on modern Linux with current GCC. Python's dependencies on libffi and libssl are incompatible with their current interfaces, and so the language can only be built with older libraries (but then the operating system needs to use the older ones too) or statically linked with those libraries, but in case of libffi that doesn't help because it will not work for its intended goal. And the further back you go, the less likely it is that you will be able to build and use any version of Python. Bet, the same is true for Go. > When was it last updated? C17 came out in 2017 C standards don't get implemented on the year they are released. Bet you Microsoft probably doesn't fully implement this standard. (I don't know, it's a guess based on past experience using their tools). In more broader terms, I have no idea why did you bring C into this argument. C is an entirely different language in terms of governance, support, standardization... It's basically all things that Go isn't. Standards and multiple interested vendors ensure the survival of the language. The whole argument against using Go for long-term projects is that it's not like C. You trying to point out that C is used successfully for long-term projects doesn't help to show that Go would too. If anything, you should suspect that it won't, because Go is the opposite of C.

dang 3y ago
Can you please not post in the flamewar style to HN, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are? It destroys the curious, thoughtful conversation that we want here, and you can make your substantive points without it. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
Wowfunhappy 3y ago
> This is demonstrably false. Hardware changes, operating system interfaces change. If you don't keep up with these changes, eventually your language becomes irrelevant. To further illustrate this point: today, versions of Python 3.7 and older cannot be built from source on modern Linux with current GCC. Python's dependencies on libffi and libssl are incompatible with their current interfaces, and so the language can only be built with older libraries (but then the operating system needs to use the older ones too) or statically linked with those libraries, but in case of libffi that doesn't help because it will not work for its intended goal. And the further back you go, the less likely it is that you will be able to build and use any version of Python. Bet, the same is true for Go. If Python 3.8+ didn't exist, how difficult would it be to update cypthon to target newer GCC? Correct me if I'm wrong, but my sense is this would be a relatively minor maintenance task. I suspect no one has updated Python 3.7 because there is no need (and because the Python foundation would prefer to nudge everyone to update anyway).
usrbinbash 3y ago
>There's a lot of misinformation, bad arguments and bad conclusions in this post. Let's pick it apart. No, there really isn't, but I had fun answering :-) > But, past isn't a guarantee of the future. It was stable before, but who's to say it will be in the future? Whos to say C will be stable tomorrow? Well, the fact that things like GCC are standards unto themself, even without any official governance (Which C has in addition). Its the same for Go. If anyone was to change that, all I have to do is check out an earlier version of this open source language, and use that. And since tons of code rely on this, that is what would happen. Languages don't become unstable because they suddenly change trajectory. This rarely ever happens. Language instability requiring constant evolvement and developer effort (both from the languages devs, as well as the languages users) is the result of feature upon feature getting heaved upon a language, along with codebases relying on these features, necessitating constant maintenance effort to keep up to date. Go, explicitly, has a completely different design trajectory. And as a result, Go code that was written in Go 1.8 will still compile today. > Go has no standard Here is the official spec of the language: https://go.dev/ref/spec https://go.dev/ref/spec Which is a de-facto standard, even according to this listing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_programming_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_programming_lang... Btw. if you look at the listing, MOST languages, including commonly used ones, don't have an international or national standard. Many don't even have a de-facto standard. Among them are many tried and battle tested languages. > and nobody will hold them responsible for the discrepancy. Anyone unhappy with the implementation is free to fork the project and take it in a different direction. He who writes the code makes the rules. If people are unhappy with that, they can fork, or use another language. And people seem to be very happy with the language: https://madnight.github.io/githut/#/pull_requests/2023/3 https://madnight.github.io/githut/#/pull_requests/2023/3 > By who? How did you come to this conclusion? There's only evidence to the contrary of your argument. What evidence is there for the assumption that Go would vanish if Google lost interest? > This is demonstrably false. No, it is not, as demonstrated by the example I gave regarding C. The language didn't change much from C99, which itself wasn't that big a step away from ANSI-C. C99 was a quarter century ago, and C remains one of the most used languages in existence. > To further illustrate this point: today, versions of Python I am pretty sure I never used Python as an example for this. If you disagree, quote where I did. > In more broader terms, I have no idea why did you bring C into this argument. For a very simple reason: To show that a language that is mostly feature-freezed, and so stable that I can run a modern compiler on decades-old unchanged code, and still get a runnable executable, can be, and are, incredibly successful. Go has been called "C for the 21st century", and for everything other than System-Programming, that statement holds true.

dang 3y ago

Can you please not post in the flamewar style to HN, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are? It destroys the curious, thoughtful conversation that we want here, and you can make your substantive points without it. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

Wowfunhappy 3y ago

> This is demonstrably false. Hardware changes, operating system interfaces change. If you don't keep up with these changes, eventually your language becomes irrelevant. To further illustrate this point: today, versions of Python 3.7 and older cannot be built from source on modern Linux with current GCC. Python's dependencies on libffi and libssl are incompatible with their current interfaces, and so the language can only be built with older libraries (but then the operating system needs to use the older ones too) or statically linked with those libraries, but in case of libffi that doesn't help because it will not work for its intended goal. And the further back you go, the less likely it is that you will be able to build and use any version of Python. Bet, the same is true for Go. If Python 3.8+ didn't exist, how difficult would it be to update cypthon to target newer GCC? Correct me if I'm wrong, but my sense is this would be a relatively minor maintenance task. I suspect no one has updated Python 3.7 because there is no need (and because the Python foundation would prefer to nudge everyone to update anyway).

usrbinbash 3y ago

>There's a lot of misinformation, bad arguments and bad conclusions in this post. Let's pick it apart. No, there really isn't, but I had fun answering :-) > But, past isn't a guarantee of the future. It was stable before, but who's to say it will be in the future? Whos to say C will be stable tomorrow? Well, the fact that things like GCC are standards unto themself, even without any official governance (Which C has in addition). Its the same for Go. If anyone was to change that, all I have to do is check out an earlier version of this open source language, and use that. And since tons of code rely on this, that is what would happen. Languages don't become unstable because they suddenly change trajectory. This rarely ever happens. Language instability requiring constant evolvement and developer effort (both from the languages devs, as well as the languages users) is the result of feature upon feature getting heaved upon a language, along with codebases relying on these features, necessitating constant maintenance effort to keep up to date. Go, explicitly, has a completely different design trajectory. And as a result, Go code that was written in Go 1.8 will still compile today. > Go has no standard Here is the official spec of the language: https://go.dev/ref/spec https://go.dev/ref/spec Which is a de-facto standard, even according to this listing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_programming_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_programming_lang... Btw. if you look at the listing, MOST languages, including commonly used ones, don't have an international or national standard. Many don't even have a de-facto standard. Among them are many tried and battle tested languages. > and nobody will hold them responsible for the discrepancy. Anyone unhappy with the implementation is free to fork the project and take it in a different direction. He who writes the code makes the rules. If people are unhappy with that, they can fork, or use another language. And people seem to be very happy with the language: https://madnight.github.io/githut/#/pull_requests/2023/3 https://madnight.github.io/githut/#/pull_requests/2023/3 > By who? How did you come to this conclusion? There's only evidence to the contrary of your argument. What evidence is there for the assumption that Go would vanish if Google lost interest? > This is demonstrably false. No, it is not, as demonstrated by the example I gave regarding C. The language didn't change much from C99, which itself wasn't that big a step away from ANSI-C. C99 was a quarter century ago, and C remains one of the most used languages in existence. > To further illustrate this point: today, versions of Python I am pretty sure I never used Python as an example for this. If you disagree, quote where I did. > In more broader terms, I have no idea why did you bring C into this argument. For a very simple reason: To show that a language that is mostly feature-freezed, and so stable that I can run a modern compiler on decades-old unchanged code, and still get a runnable executable, can be, and are, incredibly successful. Go has been called "C for the 21st century", and for everything other than System-Programming, that statement holds true.