13 ms·

Could you go into detail on your experiences for Go compared to JS or Ruby?

by dmak 13y ago

miloshadzic 13y ago
I know Ruby and some Go and never really understood why people compare them so much. Very different languages.
- enneff 13y ago
  I think it's because people use them for similar things. I have met many developers that have rewritten Ruby web services in Go (with good results).
- nXqd 13y ago
  +1
- jacques_chester 13y ago
  On HN there's a lot of people who went from writing Ruby to writing Go. If all you have are a hammer and a screwdriver, everything looks like a blog post comparing the two tools you've tried.
aaronblohowiak 13y ago
Takes me about 10-20% longer to do trivial things in go than ruby, but the results are much faster and bigger refactorings are also much faster to complete (nice type system). The ability to really max your perf out in short amount of time is also delightful
- donutdan4114 13y ago
  Yea everything takes me longer to make, but you end up with a better, faster application.
- sillysaurus2 13y ago
  My experience with Go was bizarre -- I loved programming in it, but I don't understand why! For example, Go has no REPL. (It's difficult for statically-typed languages to provide one.) It's commonly believed that a REPL is valuable and increases productivity. So if you were offered the choice, is there any circumstance in which "no REPL" is equally powerful as having one? Well, the vast majority of great hackers seem to agree that it's always superior to have a REPL than to be forced to live without. Lots of people love programming in Golang (I especially love to write distributed systems with it!) yet it probably won't ever offer us a REPL. That must mean one of two possibilities are true, both of which are bizarre: either 1) we love Go in spite of being limited by not having a REPL, or 2) having a REPL isn't as big of a deal as everyone thought. So I'd like to ask all of you: Do we love Go in spite of being held back by it? If so, then what are the factors that cause us to decide that using Go is worth giving up programming power? After all, each of us are choosing to use Go in lieu of more powerful languages. So why do we choose to give up programming power? Or do you believe in the other possibility: having a REPL doesn't matter as much as everyone thought? That seems plausible. It's at least as plausible as "it's a good idea to give up REPLs for static typing." Go is wonderful to work with. But I'm so confused why it feels wonderful to me. I know I love programming in it, but once I start thinking about the implications, I start to wonder: Isn't giving up power a bad thing, and therefore choosing to use Go == choosing to be forever held back by its deficits, and therefore it's a bad decision? Or is it true that having every possible language feature available to you ("maximum potential programming power," i.e. as far above Blub as possible) isn't as big a deal as we all thought? This pg essay talks about why it's worthwhile to have as much power as possible: http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html (search for Blub Paradox) .... So either he's wrong, or we're ignoring him even though he's right. Which is it? EDIT: There are other limitations besides lacking a REPL, e.g. there's no dynamic typing. It seems like we should try to figure out why it's a good idea to give up any programming power at all.
  - genwin 13y ago
    Less is often more! I prefer the Go Playground over a REPL, especially since I can easily see others' code snippets running using the Playground's Share feature. My 2nd favorite thing about Go (after its runtime speed) is its compiler and excellent error messages that let me quickly realize what mistake I made.

Could you go into detail on your experiences for Go compared to JS or Ruby?

by dmak 13y ago

Could you go into detail on your experiences for Go compared to JS or Ruby?

miloshadzic 13y ago

I know Ruby and some Go and never really understood why people compare them so much. Very different languages.

enneff 13y ago
I think it's because people use them for similar things. I have met many developers that have rewritten Ruby web services in Go (with good results).
nXqd 13y ago
+1
jacques_chester 13y ago
On HN there's a lot of people who went from writing Ruby to writing Go. If all you have are a hammer and a screwdriver, everything looks like a blog post comparing the two tools you've tried.

aaronblohowiak 13y ago

Takes me about 10-20% longer to do trivial things in go than ruby, but the results are much faster and bigger refactorings are also much faster to complete (nice type system). The ability to really max your perf out in short amount of time is also delightful

donutdan4114 13y ago
Yea everything takes me longer to make, but you end up with a better, faster application.
sillysaurus2 13y ago
My experience with Go was bizarre -- I loved programming in it, but I don't understand why! For example, Go has no REPL. (It's difficult for statically-typed languages to provide one.) It's commonly believed that a REPL is valuable and increases productivity. So if you were offered the choice, is there any circumstance in which "no REPL" is equally powerful as having one? Well, the vast majority of great hackers seem to agree that it's always superior to have a REPL than to be forced to live without. Lots of people love programming in Golang (I especially love to write distributed systems with it!) yet it probably won't ever offer us a REPL. That must mean one of two possibilities are true, both of which are bizarre: either 1) we love Go in spite of being limited by not having a REPL, or 2) having a REPL isn't as big of a deal as everyone thought. So I'd like to ask all of you: Do we love Go in spite of being held back by it? If so, then what are the factors that cause us to decide that using Go is worth giving up programming power? After all, each of us are choosing to use Go in lieu of more powerful languages. So why do we choose to give up programming power? Or do you believe in the other possibility: having a REPL doesn't matter as much as everyone thought? That seems plausible. It's at least as plausible as "it's a good idea to give up REPLs for static typing." Go is wonderful to work with. But I'm so confused why it feels wonderful to me. I know I love programming in it, but once I start thinking about the implications, I start to wonder: Isn't giving up power a bad thing, and therefore choosing to use Go == choosing to be forever held back by its deficits, and therefore it's a bad decision? Or is it true that having every possible language feature available to you ("maximum potential programming power," i.e. as far above Blub as possible) isn't as big a deal as we all thought? This pg essay talks about why it's worthwhile to have as much power as possible: http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html (search for Blub Paradox) .... So either he's wrong, or we're ignoring him even though he's right. Which is it? EDIT: There are other limitations besides lacking a REPL, e.g. there's no dynamic typing. It seems like we should try to figure out why it's a good idea to give up any programming power at all.
- genwin 13y ago
  Less is often more! I prefer the Go Playground over a REPL, especially since I can easily see others' code snippets running using the Playground's Share feature. My 2nd favorite thing about Go (after its runtime speed) is its compiler and excellent error messages that let me quickly realize what mistake I made.