3 ms·

Well Rob Pike did call it "juvenile" and compared it to those colored rods that are used to teach children how to count. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=51

Well Rob Pike did call it "juvenile" and compared it to those colored rods that are used to teach children how to count. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5125958 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5125958

Jabbles 14y ago
He was joking. But still, it's his personal taste to not use it.
- spacemanaki 14y ago
  Well his personal taste likely informed the design decision to use capitalization to confer some semantics for a variable.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    I'm not sure I see how capital letters make a language harder to syntax highlight.
    - papsosouid 14y ago
      It doesn't. But not using one form of visual identifier (colour) could motivate one to use another (case).
    - spacemanaki 14y ago
      It doesn't, and I wasn't arguing that... I was suggesting that if one were to prefer reading and writing code without highlighting, one might be more inclined to design a language such that capitalization carries some semantic weight. I'm just speculating here. I don't really have an opinion one way or the other, although I don't think anyone's an idiot for having an opinion about it, as the OP does.
      - tptacek 14y ago
        This makes a lot of sense. Sorry, I jumped the gun with my response.
- coldtea 14y ago
  I find I tend to disagree with most of the design decisions of Rob Pike, from minor (like that one), to the more important like the bogus emphasis on compilation speed and the half-baked excuses on not having Generics. If it was someone else on board in Go, we might have had a vastly better language.
  - Jabbles 14y ago
    That's ok. Nothing wrong with disagreeing. But it sounds like you don't like Go. As you say, it's heavily influenced by Rob's personal vision of how things should be done. Plan 9, unicode, refusal to complicate the parser etc. They're all decisions that have given Go its (IMO) unique feel. Without Rob we'd have a vastly different language, certainly.
    - coldtea 14y ago
      >But it sounds like you don't like Go. Well, I like large parts of it though. From major stuff, like the implicit interfaces, the syntax for having methods on structs etc, the simple C like syntax, to minor stuff like the capital letter for exports and gofmt for one and only one formatting. And the promise (which is not yet a reality) of a fast, memory efficient, statically compiled language.

Jabbles 14y ago

He was joking. But still, it's his personal taste to not use it.

spacemanaki 14y ago
Well his personal taste likely informed the design decision to use capitalization to confer some semantics for a variable.
- tptacek 14y ago
  I'm not sure I see how capital letters make a language harder to syntax highlight.
  - papsosouid 14y ago
    It doesn't. But not using one form of visual identifier (colour) could motivate one to use another (case).
  - spacemanaki 14y ago
    It doesn't, and I wasn't arguing that... I was suggesting that if one were to prefer reading and writing code without highlighting, one might be more inclined to design a language such that capitalization carries some semantic weight. I'm just speculating here. I don't really have an opinion one way or the other, although I don't think anyone's an idiot for having an opinion about it, as the OP does.
    - tptacek 14y ago
      This makes a lot of sense. Sorry, I jumped the gun with my response.
coldtea 14y ago
I find I tend to disagree with most of the design decisions of Rob Pike, from minor (like that one), to the more important like the bogus emphasis on compilation speed and the half-baked excuses on not having Generics. If it was someone else on board in Go, we might have had a vastly better language.
- Jabbles 14y ago
  That's ok. Nothing wrong with disagreeing. But it sounds like you don't like Go. As you say, it's heavily influenced by Rob's personal vision of how things should be done. Plan 9, unicode, refusal to complicate the parser etc. They're all decisions that have given Go its (IMO) unique feel. Without Rob we'd have a vastly different language, certainly.
  - coldtea 14y ago
    >But it sounds like you don't like Go. Well, I like large parts of it though. From major stuff, like the implicit interfaces, the syntax for having methods on structs etc, the simple C like syntax, to minor stuff like the capital letter for exports and gofmt for one and only one formatting. And the promise (which is not yet a reality) of a fast, memory efficient, statically compiled language.