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Why do people focus so much on that random side comment from Pike during one talk he gave a long time ago? It's hardly the language philosophy and it's really h

by fsmv 2y ago

Why do people focus so much on that random side comment from Pike during one talk he gave a long time ago? It's hardly the language philosophy and it's really hard to believe that Pike actually thinks Google programmers are bad or even average given that he has seen the hiring process.

gaganyaan 2y ago
Because it's straight from the horse's mouth, and it does in fact capture Go's philosophy perfectly. Go is, and was designed to be, a blub language.
Anon4Now 2y ago
> The key point here is our programmers are Googlers, they’re not researchers. I take that to mean that they're searchers, not researchers. I.e., "Googlers" here means they use Google to search for answers, not that they're Google employees.
- eru 2y ago
  Inside of Google the term 'Googler' unambiguously refers to co-workers; not to people who just happen to use Google products. (Source: I used to work there.)
- jkrejcha 2y ago
  In this context, Googlers does in fact mean Google employees. The context from the surrounding talk[1] talks about Google's use cases such as concurrency being a key part of the language, etc. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTrP_EmGNmw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTrP_EmGNmw (quote is at 20:30)
elgenie 2y ago
Pike's comment gets a lot of play because it happens to have great explanatory power for observed language design choices. It not "hardly the language philosophy", it's the language philosophy stripped of the ego-fluffing layer of marketing to language end-users.
- Zababa 2y ago
  No it's not. Please read some more recent writing by Rob Pike, like here: https://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2024/01/what-we-got-right-what-we-got-wrong.html https://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2024/01/what-we-got-right.... The money quotes: > In short, Go is not just a programming language. Of course it is a programming language, that's its definition, but its purpose was to help provide a better way to develop high-quality software, at least compared to our environment 14 plus years ago. > And that's still what it's about today. Go is a project to make building production software easier and more productive. I think there is an idea that Go is "software engineering for the masses", and that's why the word "easier" is used, and not "simpler". "easier" is fine when you're starting out and you don't know what you don't know. As times goes on, you start understanding more because you have more experience, and so you may yearn for something simpler, with less abstractions, more control. Go isn't the best language for this, but it's also far from the worst.

by fsmv 2y ago

gaganyaan 2y ago

Because it's straight from the horse's mouth, and it does in fact capture Go's philosophy perfectly. Go is, and was designed to be, a blub language.

Anon4Now 2y ago

> The key point here is our programmers are Googlers, they’re not researchers. I take that to mean that they're searchers, not researchers. I.e., "Googlers" here means they use Google to search for answers, not that they're Google employees.

eru 2y ago
Inside of Google the term 'Googler' unambiguously refers to co-workers; not to people who just happen to use Google products. (Source: I used to work there.)
jkrejcha 2y ago
In this context, Googlers does in fact mean Google employees. The context from the surrounding talk[1] talks about Google's use cases such as concurrency being a key part of the language, etc. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTrP_EmGNmw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTrP_EmGNmw (quote is at 20:30)

elgenie 2y ago

Pike's comment gets a lot of play because it happens to have great explanatory power for observed language design choices. It not "hardly the language philosophy", it's the language philosophy stripped of the ego-fluffing layer of marketing to language end-users.

Zababa 2y ago
No it's not. Please read some more recent writing by Rob Pike, like here: https://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2024/01/what-we-got-right-what-we-got-wrong.html https://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2024/01/what-we-got-right.... The money quotes: > In short, Go is not just a programming language. Of course it is a programming language, that's its definition, but its purpose was to help provide a better way to develop high-quality software, at least compared to our environment 14 plus years ago. > And that's still what it's about today. Go is a project to make building production software easier and more productive. I think there is an idea that Go is "software engineering for the masses", and that's why the word "easier" is used, and not "simpler". "easier" is fine when you're starting out and you don't know what you don't know. As times goes on, you start understanding more because you have more experience, and so you may yearn for something simpler, with less abstractions, more control. Go isn't the best language for this, but it's also far from the worst.