4 ms·
The real downside of go is that it didn't exist when Java arrived. It would have made a much better intro to CS language than Java. Then Android wouldn't have
by 0xdeadbeefbabe 13y ago
The real downside of go is that it didn't exist when Java arrived. It would have made a much better intro to CS language than Java. Then Android wouldn't have decided to use Java because so many new programmers used it in school.
- pkulak 13y agoI don't think Go could have existed in 1996. It feels like a reaction to Java, in some sense. And even if it was built, exactly as it is now, in 1996, it probably would have gone no where. "It doesn't even have object inheritance! And what do we need all these concurrency things for? Windows has only had preemptive multitasking for a year, and multi-core is still a decade away."
- malodyets 13y agoYour second paragraph quotes a fictitious someone in 1996, right?
- pkulak 13y agoHaha, yes, thanks. I added quotes.
- pjmlp 13y agoOberon and Oberon-2 were available in 1991, which Go takes the method syntax and package concepts from. GC enabled system programming languages, which failed most likely due to the Pascal syntax.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 13y agoYeah not enough Object for 96, but still it feels like an old language to me.
- wtbob 13y agoWell, Limbo existed in 1995, but it got nowhere…
- rubinelli 13y agoJava, more specifically the JVM, was a a godsend. Develop everything in your Windows 98, then upload it to some big-iron Sun server, knowing it will run, without cross-compilation headaches. And yes, at first, it was dog-slow, but it was the kind of dog that you could drag behind the barn when things got out of hand. Apache+PHP or (yuck) classic ASP would just bring the whole machine down on a bad day. This isn't much of an issue today, because first other languages/runtimes improved, second we have more robust monitors in place, and third the "machine" is more often already virtual and more easily recyclable.