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>But is absolutely essential for most tasks C is used. For all the others, why not use a higher level language like Python? What C programs are you thinking of

by enneff 14y ago

>But is absolutely essential for most tasks C is used. For all the others, why not use a higher level language like Python? What C programs are you thinking of? Thinking of significant C programs that I have used (bash, apache, gcc, and many more), I can only think of a few that wouldn't be easier to write and maintain were they written in Go, without suffering a meaningful performance penalty. Funnily enough, a lot of the uptake of Go has been from former users of Python, Ruby, and other dynamic languages; they attracted to Go's simplicity, safety, and speed. But really there's a lot more to Go the faulty dichotomy of "dynamic vs static" (or Python vs C, whatever). This is worh reading: http://talks.golang.org/2012/splash.article http://talks.golang.org/2012/splash.article >lots of people even like using dynamic languages with an IDE Agreed, and I have nothing against IDEs. I have just found that I can't comfortably write Java code by hand. There's way too much boilerplate. In my experience an IDE is essential writing Java code efficiently, and I don't think that's a good thing. >not very convincing or exciting Depends on your definition of exciting. Since I've been writing Go code I've been more excited about programming than ever before.

quatrevingts 14y ago
You'd really be OK with gcc being 2-3x slower? As much as I love high-level programming, many of the most interesting and important problems are ones where a "small" constant factor is the difference between great and mediocre.
- enneff 14y ago
  I don't think it would be 2-3x slower.
  - coldtea 14y ago
    Why thought? By all we know, it would be. On most algorithmic benchmarks Go is 2-3 or more times slower than C/C++. And parsing something like a large C++ codebase with a GC language like Go would result in tons of memory used (and slowness). Heck, even Go compiling Go programs gets OOM'ed sometimes in Linux.

by enneff 14y ago

quatrevingts 14y ago

You'd really be OK with gcc being 2-3x slower? As much as I love high-level programming, many of the most interesting and important problems are ones where a "small" constant factor is the difference between great and mediocre.

enneff 14y ago
I don't think it would be 2-3x slower.
- coldtea 14y ago
  Why thought? By all we know, it would be. On most algorithmic benchmarks Go is 2-3 or more times slower than C/C++. And parsing something like a large C++ codebase with a GC language like Go would result in tons of memory used (and slowness). Heck, even Go compiling Go programs gets OOM'ed sometimes in Linux.