6 ms·

I've been following Go rather closely lately and I noticed that these little announcements come regularly. This is clever marketing (mind share!) and one of th

by haarts 14y ago

I've been following Go rather closely lately and I noticed that these little announcements come regularly. This is clever marketing (mind share!) and one of the reasons why Go is going to win out over D et al. When was the last time you read something about D? (Perhaps I frequent the wrong watering holes.)

EwanToo 14y ago
It certainly indicates that Go is the language you should probably be using on AppEngine, given that you pay for resource (CPU, memory, etc) usage, and Google themselves are optimising Go to minimise that same usage for their own systems.
- StavrosK 14y ago
  I tried that just today, but the most (only?) decent web framework for Go, Revel, doesn't work on GAE yet. Also, as I was looking, it became painfully obvious that I would be missing the entire Django ecosystem if I went with Go. I'll try again with something I don't intend to turn into a business. Writing various daemons, tools and helpers in Go has been great, though.
  - jzelinskie 14y ago
    Maybe in some time more people who want a large web framework will be using Go, but right now the reason you don't see traction in that area is because there isn't a desire. I think if you squint your eyes while using the standard library's http templating and http libraries along with some popular libs like Gorilla's sessions and cookies, you'll swear you're using a framework. Of course, this isn't going to give you the same re-usability you get from a framework that's as compartmental as Django.
    - StavrosK 14y ago
      That's the impression I got from the IRC channel too. The equivalent of a microframework is definitely in the standard library, but big frameworks like Django just save you so much time...
  - _ak 14y ago
    So, what exactly is it that you're missing from net/http and Gorilla?
    - grey-area 14y ago
      What's missing in Go/Gorilla for web dev? Well, it covers: Serving (great built-in server for net/http) Routing Sessions Context -- It's missing: Authorisation Authentication Parameter Validation/Checking Asset management Migrations Cleaner templating (I prefer mustache to the built-in go templates) HTML Helpers/View Helpers Form Helpers ORM or other persistence helpers (controversial I know) Possibly scaffolding would be nice too and a suggested project structure to encourage sharing -- So there are a few things which you'd generally expect in a web framework which aren't there yet. Of course some of the above list is subject to debate, some is available in revel, some it not everyone would agree is even necessary, but most other platforms in other languages have a bit more to help you, even if they are minimalist. Even just having an agreed-upon set of conventions and structure for web projects (a la rails), speeds up comprehension when looking at any large code-base. I'm quite confident Go will get there, and having tried it out am really impressed with the language and the culture, but it would be disingenuous to suggest it has everything you'd need to produce large web apps currently - at present you have to write your own code for quite a lot of the above.
      - StavrosK 14y ago
        The Django admin interface is indispensable, too. Plus, you have all the pluggable apps for everything you might need.
        grey-area 14y ago
        I do think this is both a strength and a weakness. Admin interfaces and plugins/apps are great to get you up and running fast (this is similar to the scaffolding point above), but they are also the part of any ecosystem which introduces subtle bugs and dependencies. By the time you get to crud admin and plugins, you're at the point where the benefits of the framework start to come with significant additional costs (in maintenance, flexibility, comprehension etc). A pre-built app or plugin gets you up and running quickly but when you start to modify it you really need to understand the entire app/plugin before you can do so efficiently. Often people feel this is as significant a roadblock as simply writing it from scratch in the first place. Any complex webapp is probably going to outgrow standard admin/scaffolding, and any complex usage is going to require modifications of things like plugins and gems, so while they're nice to have in an ecosystem I don't see them as essential. This is an area where django has more built-in that say rails though, and it'd be interesting to see a Golang framework trying to take the best ideas from all these other popular frameworks.
mhd 14y ago
I'd say we've got two different upgrade paths here. D is aimed squarely at the C++ crowd, so the biggest enemy it has right now is that C++11 is actually half-way decent. Go is a bit more difficult to pin down, demographic-wise, but I'd say it's a mix between C minimalists and Pythonistas and other scripters who want something faster but don't want to go with a JVM-language or go all the way down to bare metal. This target group as well as Google's pedigree is why you're reading a lot about it at web programmer's forums (like, well, this one), consisting mostly of people who wouldn't (and couldn't) touch C++ with a ten foot pole.
- cageface 14y ago
  My interest in Go has a lot to do with static typing. Dynamic languages are great for brewing things up quickly but static typing is just far too useful for catching dumb bugs early and for enabling powerful tooling. Perhaps more sophisticated type systems like those found in Haskell are worth the extra effort but my money is on Go for its simplicity and pragmatism.
  - sausagefeet 14y ago
    This is why I use ocaml. The type system power to simplicity ratio beats out all other languages I've come across so far.
    - agumonkey 14y ago
      For what domain ? how is performance ? open question, I'd like to have data beside the languageshootout benchmark.
      - sausagefeet 14y ago
        I do it mostly for networking programs using Jane st a sync. Raw performance is great, on the language shootout it is on par with Go and getting better. For me it has replaced almost every language I would use except for the situations I need C.
  - 14y ago
Jabbles 14y ago
I haven't noticed these "little announcements" coming "regularly". Which have you noticed? Vitess, for YouTube, was announced on Feb 28th. I also disagree with the idea that this is "marketing". Google have made (and are continuing to make) Go as a replacement for the languages they currently use. They're scratching their own itch. Finally, I disagree that this is a major differentiator between Go and D. Neither of them push marketing, relying on the enthusiasm of their community to spread the language. They are completely different designs and have very different goals (as noted by others). I do not think that Go will win because of Google's ability to market it.
- mseepgood 14y ago
  > I also disagree with the idea that this is "marketing". Yes, it's more the opposite: they were constantly requested for proof of their dogfooding and they always replied that they can't due to "confidentiality reasons".
  - Evbn 14y ago
    Yeah, it is like Google has multiple personalities sometimes.
- haarts 14y ago
  I do believe marketing has something to do with it. I don't believe a random Google employee is allowed to disclose stuff about their infra permission is granted. This is not a bad thing mind you. Google is merely trying to win minds in the most friendly way possible. Neither did I said that this was a 'major' differentiator between Go and D. Just 'a' differentiator and not a major one at that. I have become slightly myopic with regard to the little announcements. I'm confusing it with announcements like Bitly's: http://word.bitly.com/post/29550171827/go-go-gadget http://word.bitly.com/post/29550171827/go-go-gadget or Cloudflare's: http://blog.cloudflare.com/cacheing-the-uncacheable-cloudflares-railgun-73454 http://blog.cloudflare.com/cacheing-the-uncacheable-cloudfla.... But the point still stands, I see more of these posts related to Go than posts related to D (or Clojure/Scala/Rust/...).
  - 14y ago
mseepgood 14y ago
I personally prefer Go over D, because it seems that D has almost the same complexity as C++ (and I'm in the simplicity camp). It's not a coincidence, since C++ people like Alexandescu are on board of D and C people like Thompson and Pike on board of Go. It's a philosophical / world view thing.
- pjmlp 14y ago
  This is why I moved from Go to D, as I am more the C++ type of developer. Still I wish all the best to Go team, as we really need to go away from VM languages and some day replace C and C++, be it in the form of Rust, D or Go.
mercurial 14y ago
I think it's more a question of Go fitting a need. It has a decent speed, not too much boilerplate, and built-in support for concurrency. Makes it a good fit for Python folks.
sigzero 14y ago
I don't think "D" ever hand the hype or mind share to become the next "big thing". Not by a long shot.
dualogy 14y ago
> This is clever marketing (mind share!) Or maybe gasp Go is just really good ;)
dwwoelfel 14y ago
When was the last time you read something about D? The creator just started a Kickstarter campaign for a D conference: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2083649206/the-d-programming-language-conference-2013-0 http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2083649206/the-d-program... It's doing well.
viscanti 14y ago
I had a chance to hear one of the contributors to Golang give a talk about the state of the language at Google. It sounds like the team has actively shifted (for the time being) from developing the language to building things with the language. They want to get as much real-world experience as possible, to better direct the future of the language. Most of those projects are internal to Google and can't be disclosed, but the occasional project can. I don't see it as marketing, it's more of a natural byproduct of having the Go team building things with Go (right now) rather than building Go. It's an interesting strategy.

by haarts 14y ago

EwanToo 14y ago

It certainly indicates that Go is the language you should probably be using on AppEngine, given that you pay for resource (CPU, memory, etc) usage, and Google themselves are optimising Go to minimise that same usage for their own systems.

StavrosK 14y ago
I tried that just today, but the most (only?) decent web framework for Go, Revel, doesn't work on GAE yet. Also, as I was looking, it became painfully obvious that I would be missing the entire Django ecosystem if I went with Go. I'll try again with something I don't intend to turn into a business. Writing various daemons, tools and helpers in Go has been great, though.
- jzelinskie 14y ago
  Maybe in some time more people who want a large web framework will be using Go, but right now the reason you don't see traction in that area is because there isn't a desire. I think if you squint your eyes while using the standard library's http templating and http libraries along with some popular libs like Gorilla's sessions and cookies, you'll swear you're using a framework. Of course, this isn't going to give you the same re-usability you get from a framework that's as compartmental as Django.
  - StavrosK 14y ago
    That's the impression I got from the IRC channel too. The equivalent of a microframework is definitely in the standard library, but big frameworks like Django just save you so much time...
- _ak 14y ago
  So, what exactly is it that you're missing from net/http and Gorilla?
  - grey-area 14y ago
    What's missing in Go/Gorilla for web dev? Well, it covers: Serving (great built-in server for net/http) Routing Sessions Context -- It's missing: Authorisation Authentication Parameter Validation/Checking Asset management Migrations Cleaner templating (I prefer mustache to the built-in go templates) HTML Helpers/View Helpers Form Helpers ORM or other persistence helpers (controversial I know) Possibly scaffolding would be nice too and a suggested project structure to encourage sharing -- So there are a few things which you'd generally expect in a web framework which aren't there yet. Of course some of the above list is subject to debate, some is available in revel, some it not everyone would agree is even necessary, but most other platforms in other languages have a bit more to help you, even if they are minimalist. Even just having an agreed-upon set of conventions and structure for web projects (a la rails), speeds up comprehension when looking at any large code-base. I'm quite confident Go will get there, and having tried it out am really impressed with the language and the culture, but it would be disingenuous to suggest it has everything you'd need to produce large web apps currently - at present you have to write your own code for quite a lot of the above.
    - StavrosK 14y ago
      The Django admin interface is indispensable, too. Plus, you have all the pluggable apps for everything you might need.
      - grey-area 14y ago
        I do think this is both a strength and a weakness. Admin interfaces and plugins/apps are great to get you up and running fast (this is similar to the scaffolding point above), but they are also the part of any ecosystem which introduces subtle bugs and dependencies. By the time you get to crud admin and plugins, you're at the point where the benefits of the framework start to come with significant additional costs (in maintenance, flexibility, comprehension etc). A pre-built app or plugin gets you up and running quickly but when you start to modify it you really need to understand the entire app/plugin before you can do so efficiently. Often people feel this is as significant a roadblock as simply writing it from scratch in the first place. Any complex webapp is probably going to outgrow standard admin/scaffolding, and any complex usage is going to require modifications of things like plugins and gems, so while they're nice to have in an ecosystem I don't see them as essential. This is an area where django has more built-in that say rails though, and it'd be interesting to see a Golang framework trying to take the best ideas from all these other popular frameworks.

mhd 14y ago

I'd say we've got two different upgrade paths here. D is aimed squarely at the C++ crowd, so the biggest enemy it has right now is that C++11 is actually half-way decent. Go is a bit more difficult to pin down, demographic-wise, but I'd say it's a mix between C minimalists and Pythonistas and other scripters who want something faster but don't want to go with a JVM-language or go all the way down to bare metal. This target group as well as Google's pedigree is why you're reading a lot about it at web programmer's forums (like, well, this one), consisting mostly of people who wouldn't (and couldn't) touch C++ with a ten foot pole.

cageface 14y ago
My interest in Go has a lot to do with static typing. Dynamic languages are great for brewing things up quickly but static typing is just far too useful for catching dumb bugs early and for enabling powerful tooling. Perhaps more sophisticated type systems like those found in Haskell are worth the extra effort but my money is on Go for its simplicity and pragmatism.
- sausagefeet 14y ago
  This is why I use ocaml. The type system power to simplicity ratio beats out all other languages I've come across so far.
  - agumonkey 14y ago
    For what domain ? how is performance ? open question, I'd like to have data beside the languageshootout benchmark.
    - sausagefeet 14y ago
      I do it mostly for networking programs using Jane st a sync. Raw performance is great, on the language shootout it is on par with Go and getting better. For me it has replaced almost every language I would use except for the situations I need C.
- 14y ago

Jabbles 14y ago

I haven't noticed these "little announcements" coming "regularly". Which have you noticed? Vitess, for YouTube, was announced on Feb 28th. I also disagree with the idea that this is "marketing". Google have made (and are continuing to make) Go as a replacement for the languages they currently use. They're scratching their own itch. Finally, I disagree that this is a major differentiator between Go and D. Neither of them push marketing, relying on the enthusiasm of their community to spread the language. They are completely different designs and have very different goals (as noted by others). I do not think that Go will win because of Google's ability to market it.

mseepgood 14y ago
> I also disagree with the idea that this is "marketing". Yes, it's more the opposite: they were constantly requested for proof of their dogfooding and they always replied that they can't due to "confidentiality reasons".
- Evbn 14y ago
  Yeah, it is like Google has multiple personalities sometimes.
haarts 14y ago
I do believe marketing has something to do with it. I don't believe a random Google employee is allowed to disclose stuff about their infra permission is granted. This is not a bad thing mind you. Google is merely trying to win minds in the most friendly way possible. Neither did I said that this was a 'major' differentiator between Go and D. Just 'a' differentiator and not a major one at that. I have become slightly myopic with regard to the little announcements. I'm confusing it with announcements like Bitly's: http://word.bitly.com/post/29550171827/go-go-gadget http://word.bitly.com/post/29550171827/go-go-gadget or Cloudflare's: http://blog.cloudflare.com/cacheing-the-uncacheable-cloudflares-railgun-73454 http://blog.cloudflare.com/cacheing-the-uncacheable-cloudfla.... But the point still stands, I see more of these posts related to Go than posts related to D (or Clojure/Scala/Rust/...).
- 14y ago

mseepgood 14y ago

I personally prefer Go over D, because it seems that D has almost the same complexity as C++ (and I'm in the simplicity camp). It's not a coincidence, since C++ people like Alexandescu are on board of D and C people like Thompson and Pike on board of Go. It's a philosophical / world view thing.

pjmlp 14y ago
This is why I moved from Go to D, as I am more the C++ type of developer. Still I wish all the best to Go team, as we really need to go away from VM languages and some day replace C and C++, be it in the form of Rust, D or Go.

mercurial 14y ago

I think it's more a question of Go fitting a need. It has a decent speed, not too much boilerplate, and built-in support for concurrency. Makes it a good fit for Python folks.

sigzero 14y ago

I don't think "D" ever hand the hype or mind share to become the next "big thing". Not by a long shot.

dualogy 14y ago

> This is clever marketing (mind share!) Or maybe gasp Go is just really good ;)

dwwoelfel 14y ago

When was the last time you read something about D? The creator just started a Kickstarter campaign for a D conference: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2083649206/the-d-programming-language-conference-2013-0 http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2083649206/the-d-program... It's doing well.

viscanti 14y ago

I had a chance to hear one of the contributors to Golang give a talk about the state of the language at Google. It sounds like the team has actively shifted (for the time being) from developing the language to building things with the language. They want to get as much real-world experience as possible, to better direct the future of the language. Most of those projects are internal to Google and can't be disclosed, but the occasional project can. I don't see it as marketing, it's more of a natural byproduct of having the Go team building things with Go (right now) rather than building Go. It's an interesting strategy.