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On the other hand by keeping it secret and internal they avoided making bad decisions due to defensiveness and stubbornness. An example of this is Go; they don

On the other hand by keeping it secret and internal they avoided making bad decisions due to defensiveness and stubbornness. An example of this is Go; they don't actually take input from outsiders (generics) and when they have had to give in to outside ideas they implement it poorly just to be different (exceptions as panic). They would rather people put in a no-op printf to avoid the unused package error rather than letting it be a warning because of their own self-righteousness. Apple's secretive process may not be ideal, but there are far worse processes out there.

cespare 12y ago
> On the other hand by keeping it secret and internal they avoided making bad decisions due to defensiveness and stubbornness. That is a non-sequitur. The rest of your comment appears to be low-grade trolling.
enneff 12y ago
Wow, I'm not sure how to begin responding to that. Go has taken a lot of suggestions from the open source community. Check the Go 1 mailing list discussions for examples. But panic existed before the opensource release and is not a substitute for exceptions, and nobody has actually proposed a viable generics implementation. The unused variable/package thing is a fundamental to the project's goals of working well at scale, and tools like goimports alleviate the pain (sometimes the answer is tools, not language changes). Overall I'm pretty dismayed by your characterisation of Go as an open source project. We have a lot of great contributors from outside Google and your ignorant comments do them a great disservice.
- bsdetector 12y ago
  I realize I'm in the Lion's Den. I feel that if you stepped outside the Google employee and Hacker News bubble you would see Go stubbornly refusing to have modern features, as I do. I've been programming for 30 years and have written code that is in every Linux distro, and yes I did read the Go mailing list occasionally in the early days. But if it makes you feel better to call my opinions ignorant then I hope that's working out for you.
  - jbarham 12y ago
    > I've been programming for 30 years and have written code that is in every Linux distro A very strange argument from authority considering Ken Thompson is one of Go's designers... Considering the fact that 700 people attended the inaugural Go conference, and the variety of speakers (http://gophercon.com/schedule/ http://gophercon.com/schedule/), I think it's safe to say that Go has gained traction far beyond the Google employee and HN "bubbles".
    - bsdetector 12y ago
      The argument of authority of Go designers is actually my point. By designing the language in public (even before having source available) they now don't want to admit their errors, and neither do their supporters, because they are authorities, supposedly. I'm thinking of Pike in particular. By keeping these discussions private, the Apple team did not need to protect their egos or their authority. We do not know who is responsible for which decisions at which points in the design, and they don't feel the need to defend their choices in public.
      - dsymonds 12y ago
        The Go team has admitted several errors publicly (e.g. var binding for range loops, some standard library design) on multiple occasions. Those errors won't be changed because we consider preserving backward compatibility more important. You could say that holding on to backward compatibility is "defensiveness and stubbornness", but it's really just making a different decision to what you may have done in the same situation. In fact, your premise is almost entirely incorrect. Probably 95% of Go's language design happened before it was open sourced, so it's in exactly the same situation as Swift. The Go language hasn't changed a lot since November 2009.
  - craigyk 12y ago
    I agree with you. There is a lot to like in Go, but even I can see (and I've only been programming for ~10 years) that it ignored a lot of good stuff from other languages. They keep saying they would add generics if they feel they could "do it right" but I'm starting to not believe that. I like that the language tooling is extremely disciplined and enforces even small things, like style, but this rankles a bit considering other parts of the language design seem a bit inconsistent or haphazard. Just IMO, of course.
Gigablah 12y ago
People can be defensive and stubborn regardless of whether there is outside input. Your eagerness to bash on Go has managed to upend your grasp of logic.

cespare 12y ago

> On the other hand by keeping it secret and internal they avoided making bad decisions due to defensiveness and stubbornness. That is a non-sequitur. The rest of your comment appears to be low-grade trolling.

enneff 12y ago

Wow, I'm not sure how to begin responding to that. Go has taken a lot of suggestions from the open source community. Check the Go 1 mailing list discussions for examples. But panic existed before the opensource release and is not a substitute for exceptions, and nobody has actually proposed a viable generics implementation. The unused variable/package thing is a fundamental to the project's goals of working well at scale, and tools like goimports alleviate the pain (sometimes the answer is tools, not language changes). Overall I'm pretty dismayed by your characterisation of Go as an open source project. We have a lot of great contributors from outside Google and your ignorant comments do them a great disservice.

bsdetector 12y ago
I realize I'm in the Lion's Den. I feel that if you stepped outside the Google employee and Hacker News bubble you would see Go stubbornly refusing to have modern features, as I do. I've been programming for 30 years and have written code that is in every Linux distro, and yes I did read the Go mailing list occasionally in the early days. But if it makes you feel better to call my opinions ignorant then I hope that's working out for you.
- jbarham 12y ago
  > I've been programming for 30 years and have written code that is in every Linux distro A very strange argument from authority considering Ken Thompson is one of Go's designers... Considering the fact that 700 people attended the inaugural Go conference, and the variety of speakers (http://gophercon.com/schedule/ http://gophercon.com/schedule/), I think it's safe to say that Go has gained traction far beyond the Google employee and HN "bubbles".
  - bsdetector 12y ago
    The argument of authority of Go designers is actually my point. By designing the language in public (even before having source available) they now don't want to admit their errors, and neither do their supporters, because they are authorities, supposedly. I'm thinking of Pike in particular. By keeping these discussions private, the Apple team did not need to protect their egos or their authority. We do not know who is responsible for which decisions at which points in the design, and they don't feel the need to defend their choices in public.
    - dsymonds 12y ago
      The Go team has admitted several errors publicly (e.g. var binding for range loops, some standard library design) on multiple occasions. Those errors won't be changed because we consider preserving backward compatibility more important. You could say that holding on to backward compatibility is "defensiveness and stubbornness", but it's really just making a different decision to what you may have done in the same situation. In fact, your premise is almost entirely incorrect. Probably 95% of Go's language design happened before it was open sourced, so it's in exactly the same situation as Swift. The Go language hasn't changed a lot since November 2009.
- craigyk 12y ago
  I agree with you. There is a lot to like in Go, but even I can see (and I've only been programming for ~10 years) that it ignored a lot of good stuff from other languages. They keep saying they would add generics if they feel they could "do it right" but I'm starting to not believe that. I like that the language tooling is extremely disciplined and enforces even small things, like style, but this rankles a bit considering other parts of the language design seem a bit inconsistent or haphazard. Just IMO, of course.

Gigablah 12y ago

People can be defensive and stubborn regardless of whether there is outside input. Your eagerness to bash on Go has managed to upend your grasp of logic.