7 ms·

The "X is like Y but Z" game w languages is pretty fun, and kind of illuminating as to what one thing you pick. Go is like C but with concurrency/strings/GC/a

The "X is like Y but Z" game w languages is pretty fun, and kind of illuminating as to what one thing you pick. Go is like C but with concurrency/strings/GC/a good stdlib Go is like C++ but simpler/fast compilation/no generics/a good stdlib Go is like Python but statically typed/multithreaded/fast/single executable Go is like Java but native/no OO --- One thing Go haters rarely reckon with is that Go is the only popular modern language (ie from this millennium). Everything else is way older. Well, I would actually say that this is probably the cause of Go hate--if it weren't popular no one would care.

tialaramex 1y ago
> One thing Go haters rarely reckon with is that Go is the only popular modern language (ie from this millennium). This requires you to squint so that "popular" happens to identify only a handful of languages but conveniently catches Go and not say Swift or Rust. It's not difficult to do this, but it's not very honest to yourself.
- naniwaduni 1y ago
  "Go is on the frontier of recency vs popularity (i.e. newer than all more popular languages, and more popular than all newer languages)" is honestly an "interesting" statement in its own right, but would be a distinction it has to share with Python, Java, some of JS/C#/VB/PHP depending on your popularity (and age...) metrics, and yes, Swift and Rust. And a long tail of very new languages, I suppose.
- camgunz 1y ago
  Just searching for "programming language popularity": - TIOBE [0]: Go 7 :: Rust n/a (> 10) - IEEE Spectrum [1]: Go 8 :: Rust 11 - Stack Overflow [2]: Go 13 :: Rust 14 (they're pretty close here) - GitHub [3]: Go 10 :: Rust n/a (> 10) - PYPL [4]: Go 12 :: Rust 10 - HackerRank [5]: Go 8 :: Rust n/a (> 13) - Pluralsight [6]: Go 9 :: Rust n/a (> 10) - Redmonk [7]: Go 12 :: Rust 19 Although I admit we probably don't have great measures of this, there's clearly a sizable gap here. Maybe you'd want to argue about TypeScript, Swift or Kotlin? I consider TypeScript JavaScript (because TypeScript wouldn't be popular unless all JavaScript programs were TypeScript programs), and I think Swift and Kotlin only survive because of their mobile platforms (they're also all below Go in these lists, on average). [0]: https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/ https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/ [1]: https://spectrum.ieee.org/top-programming-languages-2024 https://spectrum.ieee.org/top-programming-languages-2024 [2]: https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/technology https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/technology [3]: https://github.blog/news-insights/octoverse/octoverse-2024/#the-most-popular-programming-languages https://github.blog/news-insights/octoverse/octoverse-2024/#... [4]: https://pypl.github.io/PYPL.html https://pypl.github.io/PYPL.html [5]: https://www.hackerrank.com/blog/most-popular-languages-2024/ https://www.hackerrank.com/blog/most-popular-languages-2024/ [6]: https://www.pluralsight.com/resources/blog/upskilling/top-programming-languages-2025 https://www.pluralsight.com/resources/blog/upskilling/top-pr... [7]: https://redmonk.com/sogrady/2025/06/18/language-rankings-1-25/ https://redmonk.com/sogrady/2025/06/18/language-rankings-1-2...
  - tialaramex 1y ago
    You seem to be arguing that Go is more popular than Rust, but that's not what we're talking about. The claim made was "Go is the only popular modern language (ie from this millennium)" That's a binary, either a programming language is "modern" (from this millennium) or not and either it is "popular" (undefined) or it is not, Go is popular and modern according to the claim. On your lists you find Go is anywhere from 7th to 13th in popularity. So apparently "popular" might mean 9th like Ada on TIOBE's list right? Or maybe "modern" includes Typescript, on several of these lists? No, the whole contrivance is silly. Go is a relatively popular modern language, nobody is surprised to discover that. Is it the most popular? No. Is it the most modern? Also no.
    - camgunz 1y ago
      TL;DR: mostly what I mean is Go is the only language from this millennium that's consistently in the top 10 most popular programming languages. >> This requires you to squint so that "popular" happens to identify only a handful of languages but conveniently catches Go and not say Swift or Rust. It's not difficult to do this, but it's not very honest to yourself. > You seem to be arguing that Go is more popular than Rust, but that's not what we're talking about. Isn't this exactly what we're talking about? I don't think you have to squint too hard to invent the gap between Go and Rust (et al). > So apparently "popular" might mean 9th like Ada on TIOBE's list right? No because it's only on that list. > Or maybe "modern" includes Typescript, on several of these lists? No because TypeScript is JavaScript, which is from the last millennium. > No, the whole contrivance is silly. Emotionally I agree with you, but in practice you gotta pick a stack, and there's a lot of benefit to choosing Go over Rust/Kotlin/Swift/TypeScript/Java/C#/C/C++/Ada. > Go is a relatively popular modern language, nobody is surprised to discover that. Eh I'm making the Stroustrup "there's two kinds of programming languages" argument. IMO, at this point Go criticisms are just jeers from the cheap seats.
      - tialaramex 1y ago
        > TL;DR: mostly what I mean is Go is the only language from this millennium that's consistently in the top 10 most popular programming languages. So, if you don't count the lists where it isn't in the top ten, and you don't count languages like Typescript? Does that feel like an important distinction to you with the exceptions, rather than an arbitrary post doc justification ? > Isn't this exactly what we're talking about? I don't think you have to squint too hard to invent the gap between Go and Rust (et al). Likewise for Go and Python or Javas, so why the "top 10" ? Arbitrary. > TypeScript is JavaScript No. Javascript is (very bad) Typescript, but Typescript is not Javascript. That's why they have a transpiler. If you contend that the similarity means they're the same language that makes C++ also C and I don't think you want to start that fight. My pithy response to the Stroustrup argument is a T-shirt I own which says "Haters gonna make some good points". Yes of course people will criticize your popular language, but this observation does not make the criticisms untrue, and resorting to Stroustrup's argument is best understood as an admission that he has no response to the actual criticism. C++ is remarkably bad. You're looking at popularity lists. What else is on those lists which has similar levels of criticism? Go is a long way short of perfect but it's nowhere close to C++. If Go is the Stallone "Judge Dredd" then maybe C++ is "Batman & Robin".
- Mawr 1y ago
  Swift isn't a general purpose language and Rust is not suitable for general application development; it's also much less popular.
  - tialaramex 1y ago
    > Swift isn't a general purpose language and Rust is not suitable for general application development How do you figure Swift is not a general purpose language ?
Sesse__ 1y ago
> One thing Go haters rarely reckon with is that Go is the only popular modern language (ie from this millennium). Everything else is way older. Rust. TypeScript. Swift.
- camgunz 1y ago
  I wrote a reply to a sibling comment here [0], but wanted to reemphasize that Rust and Swift are far from popular. I think it bears repeating because the gap between a Rust/Swift and Go is notable, but the gap between a Rust/Swift and Java is a chasm. I would guess this isn't the intuition of an HNer (it wasn't mine until I dug in for this discussion haha)
  - ModernMech 1y ago
    The median number of users across all programming languages is zero. Millions of people around the world use Rust and Swift, so it seems like a stretch to say they're far from popular. If Rust isn't a popular language compared to Java, we might just as well say Java is not a popular language compared to Excel.
    - camgunz 1y ago
      I don't think millions of people use either Rust or Swift.
      - Kranar 1y ago
        Millions of people don't use Go either.
        camgunz 1y ago
        You got me
      - moltonel3x 1y ago
        According to SlashData "size of programming language communities, Q1 2025": 28.0M JS+TS ... 5.6M Swift 5.1M Rust 5.0M Go They have measured Rust growing faster than Go over the years, with the overtake finally happening in Q1 this year. There aren't a lot of reports presenting absolute numbers and not biased toward a handful of platforms or ecosystems. If you know of other good free ones, feel free to share. https://research.slashdata.co/reports/6814fddffed4a97023eab098/pages/10 https://research.slashdata.co/reports/6814fddffed4a97023eab0...
someone_19 1y ago
> Golang is basically just more concise Java But golang/newsqueak was developed much earlier, in the early 80s by Rob Pike. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsqueak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsqueak ``` type point: struct of{ x, y: int; } a:=mk(array[10] of int) // mk renamed to make select{ case i = <-c1: a = 1; case c2<- = i: a = 2; } ``` In the late 2000s, this language updated somewhat (for example, the mk function was renamed to make).

tialaramex 1y ago

> One thing Go haters rarely reckon with is that Go is the only popular modern language (ie from this millennium). This requires you to squint so that "popular" happens to identify only a handful of languages but conveniently catches Go and not say Swift or Rust. It's not difficult to do this, but it's not very honest to yourself.

naniwaduni 1y ago
"Go is on the frontier of recency vs popularity (i.e. newer than all more popular languages, and more popular than all newer languages)" is honestly an "interesting" statement in its own right, but would be a distinction it has to share with Python, Java, some of JS/C#/VB/PHP depending on your popularity (and age...) metrics, and yes, Swift and Rust. And a long tail of very new languages, I suppose.
camgunz 1y ago
Just searching for "programming language popularity": - TIOBE [0]: Go 7 :: Rust n/a (> 10) - IEEE Spectrum [1]: Go 8 :: Rust 11 - Stack Overflow [2]: Go 13 :: Rust 14 (they're pretty close here) - GitHub [3]: Go 10 :: Rust n/a (> 10) - PYPL [4]: Go 12 :: Rust 10 - HackerRank [5]: Go 8 :: Rust n/a (> 13) - Pluralsight [6]: Go 9 :: Rust n/a (> 10) - Redmonk [7]: Go 12 :: Rust 19 Although I admit we probably don't have great measures of this, there's clearly a sizable gap here. Maybe you'd want to argue about TypeScript, Swift or Kotlin? I consider TypeScript JavaScript (because TypeScript wouldn't be popular unless all JavaScript programs were TypeScript programs), and I think Swift and Kotlin only survive because of their mobile platforms (they're also all below Go in these lists, on average). [0]: https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/ https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/ [1]: https://spectrum.ieee.org/top-programming-languages-2024 https://spectrum.ieee.org/top-programming-languages-2024 [2]: https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/technology https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/technology [3]: https://github.blog/news-insights/octoverse/octoverse-2024/#the-most-popular-programming-languages https://github.blog/news-insights/octoverse/octoverse-2024/#... [4]: https://pypl.github.io/PYPL.html https://pypl.github.io/PYPL.html [5]: https://www.hackerrank.com/blog/most-popular-languages-2024/ https://www.hackerrank.com/blog/most-popular-languages-2024/ [6]: https://www.pluralsight.com/resources/blog/upskilling/top-programming-languages-2025 https://www.pluralsight.com/resources/blog/upskilling/top-pr... [7]: https://redmonk.com/sogrady/2025/06/18/language-rankings-1-25/ https://redmonk.com/sogrady/2025/06/18/language-rankings-1-2...
- tialaramex 1y ago
  You seem to be arguing that Go is more popular than Rust, but that's not what we're talking about. The claim made was "Go is the only popular modern language (ie from this millennium)" That's a binary, either a programming language is "modern" (from this millennium) or not and either it is "popular" (undefined) or it is not, Go is popular and modern according to the claim. On your lists you find Go is anywhere from 7th to 13th in popularity. So apparently "popular" might mean 9th like Ada on TIOBE's list right? Or maybe "modern" includes Typescript, on several of these lists? No, the whole contrivance is silly. Go is a relatively popular modern language, nobody is surprised to discover that. Is it the most popular? No. Is it the most modern? Also no.
  - camgunz 1y ago
    TL;DR: mostly what I mean is Go is the only language from this millennium that's consistently in the top 10 most popular programming languages. >> This requires you to squint so that "popular" happens to identify only a handful of languages but conveniently catches Go and not say Swift or Rust. It's not difficult to do this, but it's not very honest to yourself. > You seem to be arguing that Go is more popular than Rust, but that's not what we're talking about. Isn't this exactly what we're talking about? I don't think you have to squint too hard to invent the gap between Go and Rust (et al). > So apparently "popular" might mean 9th like Ada on TIOBE's list right? No because it's only on that list. > Or maybe "modern" includes Typescript, on several of these lists? No because TypeScript is JavaScript, which is from the last millennium. > No, the whole contrivance is silly. Emotionally I agree with you, but in practice you gotta pick a stack, and there's a lot of benefit to choosing Go over Rust/Kotlin/Swift/TypeScript/Java/C#/C/C++/Ada. > Go is a relatively popular modern language, nobody is surprised to discover that. Eh I'm making the Stroustrup "there's two kinds of programming languages" argument. IMO, at this point Go criticisms are just jeers from the cheap seats.
    - tialaramex 1y ago
      > TL;DR: mostly what I mean is Go is the only language from this millennium that's consistently in the top 10 most popular programming languages. So, if you don't count the lists where it isn't in the top ten, and you don't count languages like Typescript? Does that feel like an important distinction to you with the exceptions, rather than an arbitrary post doc justification ? > Isn't this exactly what we're talking about? I don't think you have to squint too hard to invent the gap between Go and Rust (et al). Likewise for Go and Python or Javas, so why the "top 10" ? Arbitrary. > TypeScript is JavaScript No. Javascript is (very bad) Typescript, but Typescript is not Javascript. That's why they have a transpiler. If you contend that the similarity means they're the same language that makes C++ also C and I don't think you want to start that fight. My pithy response to the Stroustrup argument is a T-shirt I own which says "Haters gonna make some good points". Yes of course people will criticize your popular language, but this observation does not make the criticisms untrue, and resorting to Stroustrup's argument is best understood as an admission that he has no response to the actual criticism. C++ is remarkably bad. You're looking at popularity lists. What else is on those lists which has similar levels of criticism? Go is a long way short of perfect but it's nowhere close to C++. If Go is the Stallone "Judge Dredd" then maybe C++ is "Batman & Robin".
Mawr 1y ago
Swift isn't a general purpose language and Rust is not suitable for general application development; it's also much less popular.
- tialaramex 1y ago
  > Swift isn't a general purpose language and Rust is not suitable for general application development How do you figure Swift is not a general purpose language ?

Sesse__ 1y ago

> One thing Go haters rarely reckon with is that Go is the only popular modern language (ie from this millennium). Everything else is way older. Rust. TypeScript. Swift.

camgunz 1y ago
I wrote a reply to a sibling comment here [0], but wanted to reemphasize that Rust and Swift are far from popular. I think it bears repeating because the gap between a Rust/Swift and Go is notable, but the gap between a Rust/Swift and Java is a chasm. I would guess this isn't the intuition of an HNer (it wasn't mine until I dug in for this discussion haha)
- ModernMech 1y ago
  The median number of users across all programming languages is zero. Millions of people around the world use Rust and Swift, so it seems like a stretch to say they're far from popular. If Rust isn't a popular language compared to Java, we might just as well say Java is not a popular language compared to Excel.
  - camgunz 1y ago
    I don't think millions of people use either Rust or Swift.
    - Kranar 1y ago
      Millions of people don't use Go either.
      - camgunz 1y ago
        You got me
    - moltonel3x 1y ago
      According to SlashData "size of programming language communities, Q1 2025": 28.0M JS+TS ... 5.6M Swift 5.1M Rust 5.0M Go They have measured Rust growing faster than Go over the years, with the overtake finally happening in Q1 this year. There aren't a lot of reports presenting absolute numbers and not biased toward a handful of platforms or ecosystems. If you know of other good free ones, feel free to share. https://research.slashdata.co/reports/6814fddffed4a97023eab098/pages/10 https://research.slashdata.co/reports/6814fddffed4a97023eab0...

someone_19 1y ago

> Golang is basically just more concise Java But golang/newsqueak was developed much earlier, in the early 80s by Rob Pike. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsqueak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsqueak ``` type point: struct of{ x, y: int; } a:=mk(array[10] of int) // mk renamed to make select{ case i = <-c1: a = 1; case c2<- = i: a = 2; } ``` In the late 2000s, this language updated somewhat (for example, the mk function was renamed to make).