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I have a question: why do you think Go is better compared to other languages? After all, learning a new language takes a lot of time. While basic syntax is com

by jdw64 2mo ago

I have a question: why do you think Go is better compared to other languages? After all, learning a new language takes a lot of time. While basic syntax is common and quick to pick up, mastering a language's specific mental model requires a significant time investment, which is why I've used Go before but never seriously. My interest was piqued recently when I heard about TypeScript tooling being ported to Go, and I know it is incredibly fast. However, where do the results claiming that AI agents generate superior Go code actually come from? Is it a fair, apples-to-apples comparison? Since Go is a very small language with only 25 keywords, the way you write code is extremely standardized. Because of this, I would assume it naturally produces a lot of excellent best practices and conventions, but I'm not sure if there are actual, direct code examples proving this

jeanbza 2mo ago
> why do you think Go is better compared to other languages? I didn't say that. :) > where do the results claiming that AI agents generate superior Go code actually come from? Like I said - reports from users. > Is it a fair, apples-to-apples comparison? No - these are reports from users, not a systematic analysis.
- jdw64 2mo ago
  Ah, I see. I misunderstood.Is the report from an internal source, so it can't be shared? If not, I'd appreciate it if you could send me a link so I can look into it too.
  - jatins 2mo ago
    it’s probably just some informal Slack messages between colleagues that is being described as “reports from users”. There is no Report here
    - zero_shift 2mo ago
      You are being downvoted but I think this is correct. I doubt Netflix is really doing a double blind RCT on which languages produce better AI pull requests. How would that even work, have two versions of each service in different languages? It's anecdata and maybe, MAYBE, a spreadsheet. Or a Google Form somewhere.
    - jeanbza 2mo ago
      Yes, this. =) I talk to Go users around the company all the time. Their feedback has been in this direction for a bit now.
      - switchbak 2mo ago
        But isn't this expected from users that like a certain language? Won't you also hear this response from Rust users that like Rust?
        frollogaston 2mo ago
        Exactly. I only count opinions from people who have deeply used the two langs they're comparing and can express what exactly was wrong with one of them for their task.
- PrimalPower 2mo ago
  >> why do you think Go is better compared to other languages? > I didn't say that. :) I call this the Go paradox. I simultaneously believe we should reach for it 80% of the time to solve common collaborative problems. And being a poorer language is actually an asset in these cases. However, in doing so, we get rusty lose our fluency in more expressive, perhaps even better languages.
- wvenable 2mo ago
  > Like I said - reports from users. How does that work? Are they generating the same project in different languages and comparing the results? What does it mean for the code to be "better"?
mbreese 2mo ago
Go is really amenable to being used to write code by LLMs. New code takes time to pick up, but the LLM is a quick study. In my opinion, it has little to do with the speed of the language. The large quantity of source code to train on is quite helpful, but I think it's something else. There are three things that I think make it well suited to LLM authorship - 1) static typing and a quick compiler - a variable can't change type after it's declared (unlike Python) makes Go more robust compared to dynamic languages. You (almost) always know what the type of a variable is. And the quick compiling with hard-stop errors means that the LLM gets a solid signal for each round. 2) It's quite opinionated, syntactically. There is generally one way that Go lang code is supposed to look. That means it's pretty easy to read as well as write. The lack of things like operator/method overloading make it an easy language to reason about. 3) the stdlib and limited dependencies. Dependency trees tend to be shallow, and because of the static linking (by default), you can generally be confident that what you wrote will run.

by jdw64 2mo ago

jeanbza 2mo ago

> why do you think Go is better compared to other languages? I didn't say that. :) > where do the results claiming that AI agents generate superior Go code actually come from? Like I said - reports from users. > Is it a fair, apples-to-apples comparison? No - these are reports from users, not a systematic analysis.

jdw64 2mo ago
Ah, I see. I misunderstood.Is the report from an internal source, so it can't be shared? If not, I'd appreciate it if you could send me a link so I can look into it too.
- jatins 2mo ago
  it’s probably just some informal Slack messages between colleagues that is being described as “reports from users”. There is no Report here
  - zero_shift 2mo ago
    You are being downvoted but I think this is correct. I doubt Netflix is really doing a double blind RCT on which languages produce better AI pull requests. How would that even work, have two versions of each service in different languages? It's anecdata and maybe, MAYBE, a spreadsheet. Or a Google Form somewhere.
  - jeanbza 2mo ago
    Yes, this. =) I talk to Go users around the company all the time. Their feedback has been in this direction for a bit now.
    - switchbak 2mo ago
      But isn't this expected from users that like a certain language? Won't you also hear this response from Rust users that like Rust?
      - frollogaston 2mo ago
        Exactly. I only count opinions from people who have deeply used the two langs they're comparing and can express what exactly was wrong with one of them for their task.
PrimalPower 2mo ago
>> why do you think Go is better compared to other languages? > I didn't say that. :) I call this the Go paradox. I simultaneously believe we should reach for it 80% of the time to solve common collaborative problems. And being a poorer language is actually an asset in these cases. However, in doing so, we get rusty lose our fluency in more expressive, perhaps even better languages.
wvenable 2mo ago
> Like I said - reports from users. How does that work? Are they generating the same project in different languages and comparing the results? What does it mean for the code to be "better"?

mbreese 2mo ago

Go is really amenable to being used to write code by LLMs. New code takes time to pick up, but the LLM is a quick study. In my opinion, it has little to do with the speed of the language. The large quantity of source code to train on is quite helpful, but I think it's something else. There are three things that I think make it well suited to LLM authorship - 1) static typing and a quick compiler - a variable can't change type after it's declared (unlike Python) makes Go more robust compared to dynamic languages. You (almost) always know what the type of a variable is. And the quick compiling with hard-stop errors means that the LLM gets a solid signal for each round. 2) It's quite opinionated, syntactically. There is generally one way that Go lang code is supposed to look. That means it's pretty easy to read as well as write. The lack of things like operator/method overloading make it an easy language to reason about. 3) the stdlib and limited dependencies. Dependency trees tend to be shallow, and because of the static linking (by default), you can generally be confident that what you wrote will run.