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Go missed a big opportunity to be Rust when we needed Rust more than anything. I have long since moved on from Go and C#/.NET is widely available nowadays and i

Go missed a big opportunity to be Rust when we needed Rust more than anything. I have long since moved on from Go and C#/.NET is widely available nowadays and in many respects less held back by some strange political choices when it comes to DevEx (I am of course talking about generics).

9rx 7mo ago
Rust is the older project of the two, kicking off in 2006. Go, which set sail in 2007, duplicating the work of Rust would have been pointless. We already had Rust. Go's objective was to become a faster Python. Which was something we also desperately needed at the time, and it has well succeeded on that front. Go has largely replaced all the non-data science things people were earlier doing with Python.
- za3faran 7mo ago
  If you saw the early presentations, they complained about the slow compile times and high complexity of C++. It seems that they were targeting that, not Python.
  - 9rx 7mo ago
    I did see the early presentations. And since you did too, you will recall that one of the primary priorities was for it to "feel like a dynamically-typed language". You know, because it was trying to be a faster Python. What you might be confusing that with is that their assumption was that Google services were written in C++ because those services needed C++ performance, not because the developers wanted to write code in C++, and that those C++ developers would jump at the chance to use a Python-like language that still satisfies them performance-wise. It turns out they were wrong — the developers actually did want to write C++ — but you can understand the thinking when Google was already using Python heavily in less performance-critical areas. Guido van Rossum himself was even on the payroll at the time. For what it is worth, Google did create "Rust" after learning that a faster Python doesn't satisfy C++ developers. It's called Carbon. But it is telling that the earlier commenter has never heard of it, and it is unlikely it will ever leave the heap of esoteric languages because duplicating Rust was, and continues to be, pointless. We already had Rust.

9rx 7mo ago

Rust is the older project of the two, kicking off in 2006. Go, which set sail in 2007, duplicating the work of Rust would have been pointless. We already had Rust. Go's objective was to become a faster Python. Which was something we also desperately needed at the time, and it has well succeeded on that front. Go has largely replaced all the non-data science things people were earlier doing with Python.

za3faran 7mo ago
If you saw the early presentations, they complained about the slow compile times and high complexity of C++. It seems that they were targeting that, not Python.
- 9rx 7mo ago
  I did see the early presentations. And since you did too, you will recall that one of the primary priorities was for it to "feel like a dynamically-typed language". You know, because it was trying to be a faster Python. What you might be confusing that with is that their assumption was that Google services were written in C++ because those services needed C++ performance, not because the developers wanted to write code in C++, and that those C++ developers would jump at the chance to use a Python-like language that still satisfies them performance-wise. It turns out they were wrong — the developers actually did want to write C++ — but you can understand the thinking when Google was already using Python heavily in less performance-critical areas. Guido van Rossum himself was even on the payroll at the time. For what it is worth, Google did create "Rust" after learning that a faster Python doesn't satisfy C++ developers. It's called Carbon. But it is telling that the earlier commenter has never heard of it, and it is unlikely it will ever leave the heap of esoteric languages because duplicating Rust was, and continues to be, pointless. We already had Rust.