5 ms·

Did you have to work around some rough edges of the language in that job? To me it feels like it never quite reached maturity, although in a better world it wo

Did you have to work around some rough edges of the language in that job? To me it feels like it never quite reached maturity, although in a better world it would have gotten more support and conquered all territory that is now ruled by the Gophers. I guess to make a successful programming language, you either need corporate backing or extend an existing one nowadays, otherwise it's really hard to build a stdlib of modern proportions.

steve_adams_86 2y ago
As I recall the rough edges were a lack of tutorials and docs at the time. There are some “weird” things about the language which are totally fine if you know what they are, but it’s brutal if you don’t have a quick reference to make sense of things. It has been a while so I can’t recall very clearly, and I have a feeling the community and docs around it are all much better now.
zem 2y ago
> it's really hard to build a stdlib of modern proportions. it would surprise me if the stdlib was the issue. you can clone the ruby, python, or go standard libraries, and that would get you into a good state pretty fast; those languages have already done the work to assemble a standard library that people seem satisfied with by and large, and translating code into a new language is far easier than coming up with what should go into a library and then designing and implementing it from scratch. still takes time and effort but there's a clear roadmap if you go that route. I suspect the real weakness is the thousands of third party packages for stuff that is too specialised or niche to be in the stdlib, but when you need it you really need it. (e.g. I have recently felt the need for an implementation of the blossom algorithm for graph matching in elixir; in python or ruby it's already done for me and available as a package)

5 ms·

Did you have to work around some rough edges of the language in that job? To me it feels like it never quite reached maturity, although in a better world it wo

by jaynetics 2y ago

steve_adams_86 2y ago
As I recall the rough edges were a lack of tutorials and docs at the time. There are some “weird” things about the language which are totally fine if you know what they are, but it’s brutal if you don’t have a quick reference to make sense of things. It has been a while so I can’t recall very clearly, and I have a feeling the community and docs around it are all much better now.
zem 2y ago
> it's really hard to build a stdlib of modern proportions. it would surprise me if the stdlib was the issue. you can clone the ruby, python, or go standard libraries, and that would get you into a good state pretty fast; those languages have already done the work to assemble a standard library that people seem satisfied with by and large, and translating code into a new language is far easier than coming up with what should go into a library and then designing and implementing it from scratch. still takes time and effort but there's a clear roadmap if you go that route. I suspect the real weakness is the thousands of third party packages for stuff that is too specialised or niche to be in the stdlib, but when you need it you really need it. (e.g. I have recently felt the need for an implementation of the blossom algorithm for graph matching in elixir; in python or ruby it's already done for me and available as a package)