4 ms·

I initially agreed, but realize it's just because go hasn't been widely used in GUI development. With a proper SDK, there's nothing wrong with it in this role

by axaxs 13y ago

I initially agreed, but realize it's just because go hasn't been widely used in GUI development. With a proper SDK, there's nothing wrong with it in this role that I can think of. In full disclosure, I've not done Android development out of my distaste for Java, so I'd welcome it.

wyager 13y ago
> but realize it's just because go hasn't been widely used in GUI development There are a lot more reasons than that. For one, Go has awful support for any kind of generic programming. The closest thing Go has to proper generic support is the interface{} type, which is awful. It's basically the same type safety as a 100% dynamically typed language (i.e. almost none), but with a much uglier syntax. A related issue is that Go isn't very extensible. For example, Go's iteration features only work on builtin types. You can't iterate over trees, graphs, sets, or any other non-builtin type. For me, the only good things that Go offers are decent threading primitives and good standard library support. Nothing else excels, and some things are downright bad.
- oscargrouch 13y ago
  Dont know why just because of a negative critique, people have downvoted you.. so im doing justice and doing a upvote I might not agree with this comment, but at least his showing the reasons why he dont think Go is a good candidate for mobile development, and his opinion is technical backed I think this should be in some HN etiquette somewhere.. dont know why people are so sensitive when a comment is not to say something nice about something..
  - pkulak 13y ago
    Every language doesn't have something. A better response would have tied those ommisions into GUI development. A set in Go is a hash, queues are channels. You can range over both. I've never used custom tree iteration in Java to build an Android app and I've managed to do okay.
  - RyanZAG 13y ago
    It's an interesting phenomenon that occurs on HN. It's fairly easy to explain. Each HN user that sees this post has a chance to view and comment on the post depending on his interests. A Python developer would be likely to simply skip this post, while a Go developer would be highly likely to view this post as he has an interest in using his Go knowledge on more platforms. That means we have a highly skewed distribution of people upvoting and downvoting comments on any language specific article. For example, if there are 10 Go developers for every 100 Python developers viewing HN, in a thread such as this one, there may be 9 Go developers for every 5 Python developers. This means that a large percentage of viewers of any critical Go posts in a Go thread are Go developers. They will downvote that critical post almost regardless of content. This is not a knock on Go developers, merely standard tribalism. There is an identical effect in Haskell, Ruby, or even Perl discussions. There is probably no solution - if you value karma, I recommend not posting critical comments about a language in a post specific to that thread. You should rather save those comments for more general threads about programming theory, etc. If you don't care about karma (and you shouldn't), then please keep posting.
  - rm445 13y ago
    Just because someone frames an opinion in technical terms doesn't make it relevant to the discussion. There's a mismatch in the levels of abstraction, claiming that a lack generic programming is Go's downfall for mobile application development. Some people clearly feel quite strongly that generics are a vital part of any language. But they don't really tie into the difficulties of mobile app programming, which are (i) resource contraints, much tighter and differently prioritised to desktop and server programs; and (ii) dealing with GUI libraries, which typically have massive numbers of functions, nests of callbacks, and are generally fiddly to program. Generics can be a help with various algorithms but it's far from clear that they help with mobile-specific issues. Your parent poster is the typical person who shouts about generics in every Go thread. Like the people who spit bile every time Stephen Wolfram is mentioned in any context, it gets pretty tiresome.
- mseepgood 13y ago
  What do generics or loop syntax sugar have to do with GUI development?
  - wyager 13y ago
    >What do generics or loop syntax sugar have to do with GUI development? Nothing. Someone said something along the lines of "Go is only bad for mobile because it has bad GUI support." I disagreed. Mobile development is more than just GUI development. If the only thing I cared about when writing a mobile app was GUI support, I could write mobile apps in HyperCard.
    - herokusaki 13y ago
      Is there a HyperCard clone for the mobile?

by axaxs 13y ago

wyager 13y ago

> but realize it's just because go hasn't been widely used in GUI development There are a lot more reasons than that. For one, Go has awful support for any kind of generic programming. The closest thing Go has to proper generic support is the interface{} type, which is awful. It's basically the same type safety as a 100% dynamically typed language (i.e. almost none), but with a much uglier syntax. A related issue is that Go isn't very extensible. For example, Go's iteration features only work on builtin types. You can't iterate over trees, graphs, sets, or any other non-builtin type. For me, the only good things that Go offers are decent threading primitives and good standard library support. Nothing else excels, and some things are downright bad.

oscargrouch 13y ago
Dont know why just because of a negative critique, people have downvoted you.. so im doing justice and doing a upvote I might not agree with this comment, but at least his showing the reasons why he dont think Go is a good candidate for mobile development, and his opinion is technical backed I think this should be in some HN etiquette somewhere.. dont know why people are so sensitive when a comment is not to say something nice about something..
- pkulak 13y ago
  Every language doesn't have something. A better response would have tied those ommisions into GUI development. A set in Go is a hash, queues are channels. You can range over both. I've never used custom tree iteration in Java to build an Android app and I've managed to do okay.
- RyanZAG 13y ago
  It's an interesting phenomenon that occurs on HN. It's fairly easy to explain. Each HN user that sees this post has a chance to view and comment on the post depending on his interests. A Python developer would be likely to simply skip this post, while a Go developer would be highly likely to view this post as he has an interest in using his Go knowledge on more platforms. That means we have a highly skewed distribution of people upvoting and downvoting comments on any language specific article. For example, if there are 10 Go developers for every 100 Python developers viewing HN, in a thread such as this one, there may be 9 Go developers for every 5 Python developers. This means that a large percentage of viewers of any critical Go posts in a Go thread are Go developers. They will downvote that critical post almost regardless of content. This is not a knock on Go developers, merely standard tribalism. There is an identical effect in Haskell, Ruby, or even Perl discussions. There is probably no solution - if you value karma, I recommend not posting critical comments about a language in a post specific to that thread. You should rather save those comments for more general threads about programming theory, etc. If you don't care about karma (and you shouldn't), then please keep posting.
- rm445 13y ago
  Just because someone frames an opinion in technical terms doesn't make it relevant to the discussion. There's a mismatch in the levels of abstraction, claiming that a lack generic programming is Go's downfall for mobile application development. Some people clearly feel quite strongly that generics are a vital part of any language. But they don't really tie into the difficulties of mobile app programming, which are (i) resource contraints, much tighter and differently prioritised to desktop and server programs; and (ii) dealing with GUI libraries, which typically have massive numbers of functions, nests of callbacks, and are generally fiddly to program. Generics can be a help with various algorithms but it's far from clear that they help with mobile-specific issues. Your parent poster is the typical person who shouts about generics in every Go thread. Like the people who spit bile every time Stephen Wolfram is mentioned in any context, it gets pretty tiresome.
mseepgood 13y ago
What do generics or loop syntax sugar have to do with GUI development?
- wyager 13y ago
  >What do generics or loop syntax sugar have to do with GUI development? Nothing. Someone said something along the lines of "Go is only bad for mobile because it has bad GUI support." I disagreed. Mobile development is more than just GUI development. If the only thing I cared about when writing a mobile app was GUI support, I could write mobile apps in HyperCard.
  - herokusaki 13y ago
    Is there a HyperCard clone for the mobile?