5 ms·

"We hire working-class college graduates from the normal population, and not ivy league graduates who have the time to waste on unproductive academic research l

"We hire working-class college graduates from the normal population, and not ivy league graduates who have the time to waste on unproductive academic research languages that see no industrial use." Is this what is so damning about Go? The constant reposting of this quote as some sort of attack on Go's validity and reputation reeks of nothing but classism.

erik_seaberg 2y ago
Google is famous for tough interviews and accepting a small fraction of applicants. I was impressed with everyone I met, and Pike's "incapable" statement was baseless and insulting.
- onefiveone 2y ago
  > Pike's "incapable" statement was baseless and insulting. "incapable" != "never capable", especially when talking about fresh college graduates.
  - nine_k 2y ago
    "Unwilling", "have no time", "can't be bothered" are all better than "incapable".
codr7 2y ago
The complaint is that it was designed for lesser brains and lacks many features professionals expect, and that's pretty much an objective truth.
- desumeku 2y ago
  This is a horrifically obtuse and offensive comment just because Go isn't Lisp-y or Haskell-y enough for you. Golang powers large swathes of distributed services and systems all over the world whether you like it or not, because it was designed with a very specific purpose in mind by people far more professional and accomplished than you ever will be.
  - trehalose 2y ago
    I think that comment might actually have been because of this quote from one of Go's creators, which was posted further up in the thread: “The key point here is our programmers are Googlers, they’re not researchers. They’re typically, fairly young, fresh out of school, probably learned Java, maybe learned C or C++, probably learned Python. They’re not capable of understanding a brilliant language but we want to use them to build good software. So, the language that we give them has to be easy for them to understand and easy to adopt.” -- Rob Pike
    - desumeku 2y ago
      It's a huge and dishonest leap to jump from "our programmers are Googlers, not researchers." to "Rob Pike admitted anyone who uses Go is stupid and if they were smart they would be using Scheme instead." That's just not what he said or implied.
  - codr7 2y ago
    And part of that specific purpose was to prevent lesser developers from making a mess, like it or not.
    - desumeku 2y ago
      There is no such thing as the sufficiently smart developer.
    - jyounker 2y ago
      And the problem with that is? Honestly, the more experienced a developer is, the more their code naturally seems to look like what Go shepherds you towards. It's not a perfect language, but it's a pretty good language for building shit and shipping stuff.
      - codr7 2y ago
        I've written a ton of Go, for fun and professionally. And it starts getting to you, because a lot of problems just don't have nice solutions in the language because of its limitations. So you start accumulating kludges, which lowers the bar for quality in the entire code base. There are PLENTY of techniques and abstractions that are VERY useful yet not expressible in a sane way in Go. It's a nice enough language for beginners, but acting like it's the end all of programming just makes you look like a fool.
nine_k 2y ago
Googlers used to think about themselves as of elite engineers, having passed a very stringent and demanding interview process. Mr. Pike's quotation assumes that the Googlers should not be expected to be too intellectually capable. That's the damning part for me.
- desumeku 2y ago
  Intellectually capable to do what? Orchestrate some of the largest distributed network systems in the world? I bet you all the best functional programmers wouldn't be able to create something as big as Google if you got them in a room together. Nor would they be able to create anything as important as UNIX, like one of Go's creators did. Nor UTF-8. Nor the JVM HotSpot machine. I could go on. What have you done that Ken Thompson couldn't? The fact that none of these highly accomplished individuals want anything FP-related in Go says far more than what typical Go-haters want to think it does.
  - Capricorn2481 2y ago
    > The fact that none of these highly accomplished individuals want anything FP-related in Go says far more than what typical Go-haters want to think it does. Does it? I'm not a Go hater but just because they were involved in making the things you listed doesn't mean they would do it again with Go. It just means they don't trust others with different languages. I don't think what you said refutes people's perception of Go, which is its a fairly limited language that is good for keeping people on rails (like fresh grads). That might make sense for a large business hiring lots of people but maybe not for small companies. Also there is a world of difference between FP features and the basic features people asked for in Go (like generics).

erik_seaberg 2y ago

Google is famous for tough interviews and accepting a small fraction of applicants. I was impressed with everyone I met, and Pike's "incapable" statement was baseless and insulting.

onefiveone 2y ago
> Pike's "incapable" statement was baseless and insulting. "incapable" != "never capable", especially when talking about fresh college graduates.
- nine_k 2y ago
  "Unwilling", "have no time", "can't be bothered" are all better than "incapable".

codr7 2y ago

The complaint is that it was designed for lesser brains and lacks many features professionals expect, and that's pretty much an objective truth.

desumeku 2y ago
This is a horrifically obtuse and offensive comment just because Go isn't Lisp-y or Haskell-y enough for you. Golang powers large swathes of distributed services and systems all over the world whether you like it or not, because it was designed with a very specific purpose in mind by people far more professional and accomplished than you ever will be.
- trehalose 2y ago
  I think that comment might actually have been because of this quote from one of Go's creators, which was posted further up in the thread: “The key point here is our programmers are Googlers, they’re not researchers. They’re typically, fairly young, fresh out of school, probably learned Java, maybe learned C or C++, probably learned Python. They’re not capable of understanding a brilliant language but we want to use them to build good software. So, the language that we give them has to be easy for them to understand and easy to adopt.” -- Rob Pike
  - desumeku 2y ago
    It's a huge and dishonest leap to jump from "our programmers are Googlers, not researchers." to "Rob Pike admitted anyone who uses Go is stupid and if they were smart they would be using Scheme instead." That's just not what he said or implied.
- codr7 2y ago
  And part of that specific purpose was to prevent lesser developers from making a mess, like it or not.
  - desumeku 2y ago
    There is no such thing as the sufficiently smart developer.
  - jyounker 2y ago
    And the problem with that is? Honestly, the more experienced a developer is, the more their code naturally seems to look like what Go shepherds you towards. It's not a perfect language, but it's a pretty good language for building shit and shipping stuff.
    - codr7 2y ago
      I've written a ton of Go, for fun and professionally. And it starts getting to you, because a lot of problems just don't have nice solutions in the language because of its limitations. So you start accumulating kludges, which lowers the bar for quality in the entire code base. There are PLENTY of techniques and abstractions that are VERY useful yet not expressible in a sane way in Go. It's a nice enough language for beginners, but acting like it's the end all of programming just makes you look like a fool.

nine_k 2y ago

Googlers used to think about themselves as of elite engineers, having passed a very stringent and demanding interview process. Mr. Pike's quotation assumes that the Googlers should not be expected to be too intellectually capable. That's the damning part for me.

desumeku 2y ago
Intellectually capable to do what? Orchestrate some of the largest distributed network systems in the world? I bet you all the best functional programmers wouldn't be able to create something as big as Google if you got them in a room together. Nor would they be able to create anything as important as UNIX, like one of Go's creators did. Nor UTF-8. Nor the JVM HotSpot machine. I could go on. What have you done that Ken Thompson couldn't? The fact that none of these highly accomplished individuals want anything FP-related in Go says far more than what typical Go-haters want to think it does.
- Capricorn2481 2y ago
  > The fact that none of these highly accomplished individuals want anything FP-related in Go says far more than what typical Go-haters want to think it does. Does it? I'm not a Go hater but just because they were involved in making the things you listed doesn't mean they would do it again with Go. It just means they don't trust others with different languages. I don't think what you said refutes people's perception of Go, which is its a fairly limited language that is good for keeping people on rails (like fresh grads). That might make sense for a large business hiring lots of people but maybe not for small companies. Also there is a world of difference between FP features and the basic features people asked for in Go (like generics).