5 ms·

This roughly lines up with my feelings. Go is a solid improvement over many languages that we inherited from the 70s, 80s and 90s. But it also retains a certai

This roughly lines up with my feelings. Go is a solid improvement over many languages that we inherited from the 70s, 80s and 90s. But it also retains a certain "we don't need a robust type system; weak-ish static typing is good enough" ethos that made sense in back then, when compilers were hard enough to write that it was easier to justify making the programmer handle more things manually for the sake of simplifying the compiler authors' job. This is always a tradeoff, of course, but I think that the optimum balance has shifted even further in favor of programmers. Some of Go's decisions still made sense in the 2000s when the language was first being created. But now, 15 or so years later, I think many of us could be forgiven for wishing for a language that's a lot like Go except that it dared to dream just a little bit bigger.

d0mine 3y ago
> 70s, 80s and 90s It reminded me of Go vs. Algol-69 http://cowlark.com/2009-11-15-go/ http://cowlark.com/2009-11-15-go/
bborud 3y ago
Language design is always easier in retrospect. It is harder than it looks, and often harder than the people designing a language realize before it is too late. I think it was a good choice to take smaller steps and try to not be too ambitious too soon. Sure, Go isn't the most sexy language from an academic point of view, but it has a certain conservative and pragmatic approach that does work. It does generally result in code that is a lot easier to read and maintain than is my experience with C, C++, Java, C# and a few other languages I've worked in. Go is an engineering language - not an academic exercise. Take, for instance, the approach to generics. They could have designed that in from the beginning, but they showed restraint and didn't. That probably took a fair bit of courage. It is my impression that they hadn't figured out what generics should look like in Go, so they postponed until they had a better feel for how it ought to be done. Rather than risk making choices that would be hard (impossible?) to rectify later. When you add something to a language there is always the risk that you make it worse. (I'm not making any qualitative judgements on Go generics since, frankly, I don't feel qualified. I make very sparing use of it because it really isn't that often I actually need to make use of it) People tend to forget that Java didn't have generics until 1.5 (or 5.0 or however they prefer to version it now) - about 9 years after first being launched. And to be frank, that was not a fun experience at all. Not so much because there was something wrong with the design, but because suddenly a lot of people went overboard and started designing really hairy types that could be hard to figure out and use. If you consider C++: C++ spent 20+ years flailing wildly and the result was that you got lots of different C++ "traditions", subsets and practices. Sometimes within the same company. Depending on which era or tradition a C++ codebase is from you may have to adjust to a wholly different way of programming from what you are used to or prefer. And as for generic programming: in what world is STL a neat solution? And to this day, compilers are slow, they produce rubbish error messages, the toolchain still feels like a 1970s ad-hoc mess, and there is no definitive way to build things, resulting in lots and lots of additional complexity when trying to tame the horrific tool chain. Sure, they could have put loads of stuff in Go from the beginning. But I think they would have gotten a lot more wrong if they had. I really appreciate that they are evolving the language slowly and conservatively.
- Cthulhu_ 3y ago
  > Go is an engineering language - not an academic exercise. Great summary. I personally think Scala is the antithesis to Go, it being an academic exercise - with complexity and tooling to boot. re: Java generics, I've got this comment from 2015 bookmarked, it's a great explainer about the decision process behind adding generics to Go and the problem(s) with Java's implementation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9622417 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9622417
  - bborud 3y ago
    Thanks for posting that link. It lead to a lot of interesting background material! I think this quote in particular resonates: > those ideas simply haven’t had time to pass through the filter of > practical experience
    - bunderbunder 3y ago
      I remain somewhat unconvinced on that front. There were good implementations from outside the functional programming sphere (which seems to be what people from the Go space tend to mean when they say "academic") already existing at the time. I think the real problem is that the most well-known examples, C++ STL and Java 5 generics, were trying to stick generics into an existing language with a "some things are objects and some things are not objects" type system. My take on the story there is that generics called attention to some deep deficiencies in that kind of type system, and people responded by shooting the messenger. Languages like C# (which I've used extensively) and Eiffel (haven't used in anger), on the other hand, have a consistent type system, and didn't seem to have the same problems with generics that Java and C++ did. Or for a non-object-oriented model that has some other features that might be attractive to Go, such as not allowing implicit specialization, there's Ada.
danenania 3y ago
I think the key question is how robust a type system can be while keeping compilation extremely fast. Slow compilation absolutely destroys developer productivity.
- afandian 3y ago
  I’ve used a number of languages over the years and I have never been more productive than with Kotlin.
- Cthulhu_ 3y ago
  I'm wondering if there will be a language that compiles to Go, like Typescript is for Javascript, that adds a stricter type system (and fixes other issues) and adds a compiler step, but still has all the other benefits of Go.
- throwawa14223 3y ago
  Conversely I could go longer between compiles if the type system caught more.
  - Cthulhu_ 3y ago
    It doesn't even have to affect compile times per se, it could be a linter/checker task running separately from the main compiler; most type errors are only relevant during development in my experience. Said experience lately is a lot of Typescript, where all type information is no longer relevant at runtime because it's compiled out or just bluntly removed to make it valid JS (I dunno how the TS compiler works).
  - arp242 3y ago
    Most of the times when I really care about quick feedback cycles is when I'm experimenting to see what approach does and doesn't work well in the first place. I care a lot less about it for "simple" errors like typing errors, typos, or whatnot. This is mostly trivial stuff compared to "is this entire approach good or not?"
    - 3y ago

d0mine 3y ago

> 70s, 80s and 90s It reminded me of Go vs. Algol-69 http://cowlark.com/2009-11-15-go/ http://cowlark.com/2009-11-15-go/

bborud 3y ago

Language design is always easier in retrospect. It is harder than it looks, and often harder than the people designing a language realize before it is too late. I think it was a good choice to take smaller steps and try to not be too ambitious too soon. Sure, Go isn't the most sexy language from an academic point of view, but it has a certain conservative and pragmatic approach that does work. It does generally result in code that is a lot easier to read and maintain than is my experience with C, C++, Java, C# and a few other languages I've worked in. Go is an engineering language - not an academic exercise. Take, for instance, the approach to generics. They could have designed that in from the beginning, but they showed restraint and didn't. That probably took a fair bit of courage. It is my impression that they hadn't figured out what generics should look like in Go, so they postponed until they had a better feel for how it ought to be done. Rather than risk making choices that would be hard (impossible?) to rectify later. When you add something to a language there is always the risk that you make it worse. (I'm not making any qualitative judgements on Go generics since, frankly, I don't feel qualified. I make very sparing use of it because it really isn't that often I actually need to make use of it) People tend to forget that Java didn't have generics until 1.5 (or 5.0 or however they prefer to version it now) - about 9 years after first being launched. And to be frank, that was not a fun experience at all. Not so much because there was something wrong with the design, but because suddenly a lot of people went overboard and started designing really hairy types that could be hard to figure out and use. If you consider C++: C++ spent 20+ years flailing wildly and the result was that you got lots of different C++ "traditions", subsets and practices. Sometimes within the same company. Depending on which era or tradition a C++ codebase is from you may have to adjust to a wholly different way of programming from what you are used to or prefer. And as for generic programming: in what world is STL a neat solution? And to this day, compilers are slow, they produce rubbish error messages, the toolchain still feels like a 1970s ad-hoc mess, and there is no definitive way to build things, resulting in lots and lots of additional complexity when trying to tame the horrific tool chain. Sure, they could have put loads of stuff in Go from the beginning. But I think they would have gotten a lot more wrong if they had. I really appreciate that they are evolving the language slowly and conservatively.

Cthulhu_ 3y ago
> Go is an engineering language - not an academic exercise. Great summary. I personally think Scala is the antithesis to Go, it being an academic exercise - with complexity and tooling to boot. re: Java generics, I've got this comment from 2015 bookmarked, it's a great explainer about the decision process behind adding generics to Go and the problem(s) with Java's implementation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9622417 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9622417
- bborud 3y ago
  Thanks for posting that link. It lead to a lot of interesting background material! I think this quote in particular resonates: > those ideas simply haven’t had time to pass through the filter of > practical experience
  - bunderbunder 3y ago
    I remain somewhat unconvinced on that front. There were good implementations from outside the functional programming sphere (which seems to be what people from the Go space tend to mean when they say "academic") already existing at the time. I think the real problem is that the most well-known examples, C++ STL and Java 5 generics, were trying to stick generics into an existing language with a "some things are objects and some things are not objects" type system. My take on the story there is that generics called attention to some deep deficiencies in that kind of type system, and people responded by shooting the messenger. Languages like C# (which I've used extensively) and Eiffel (haven't used in anger), on the other hand, have a consistent type system, and didn't seem to have the same problems with generics that Java and C++ did. Or for a non-object-oriented model that has some other features that might be attractive to Go, such as not allowing implicit specialization, there's Ada.

danenania 3y ago

I think the key question is how robust a type system can be while keeping compilation extremely fast. Slow compilation absolutely destroys developer productivity.

afandian 3y ago
I’ve used a number of languages over the years and I have never been more productive than with Kotlin.
Cthulhu_ 3y ago
I'm wondering if there will be a language that compiles to Go, like Typescript is for Javascript, that adds a stricter type system (and fixes other issues) and adds a compiler step, but still has all the other benefits of Go.
throwawa14223 3y ago
Conversely I could go longer between compiles if the type system caught more.
- Cthulhu_ 3y ago
  It doesn't even have to affect compile times per se, it could be a linter/checker task running separately from the main compiler; most type errors are only relevant during development in my experience. Said experience lately is a lot of Typescript, where all type information is no longer relevant at runtime because it's compiled out or just bluntly removed to make it valid JS (I dunno how the TS compiler works).
- arp242 3y ago
  Most of the times when I really care about quick feedback cycles is when I'm experimenting to see what approach does and doesn't work well in the first place. I care a lot less about it for "simple" errors like typing errors, typos, or whatnot. This is mostly trivial stuff compared to "is this entire approach good or not?"
  - 3y ago