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The Go designers clearly had full awareness of every language feature available in alternatives. They consciously and intentionally made the choices they did. T

by personZ 12y ago

The Go designers clearly had full awareness of every language feature available in alternatives. They consciously and intentionally made the choices they did. This is obvious, of course, but often it is stated as if they came out of a cave, language in hand, unaware of all the great things they were missing. And to your last sentence, use in production is not a good measure of language quality It is actually a great indicator of the gap between abstract language tourism, and practical day to day development. I will say again that Haskell is held as the perfect language and set of choices on here constantly (particularly when used to denigrate Go). Yet it is used for perilously few actual solutions (despite being around for decades). Sometimes the things that seem incredibly important and of great value just aren't such a great value in the real world. Similarly, things that seem minor end up being very important.

kvb 12y ago
Perhaps we're talking past each other - I'm certainly not saying Go should be Haskell (I've never even written a Haskell program!). Go's designers are clearly not stupid, and many people seem quite satisfied with their design choices. But that doesn't mean they "had full awareness of every language feature available in the alternatives", and even if they did, smart people are still susceptible to the blub paradox. As for use in production, I agree that it can be a fair barometer for "utility", but I strongly disagree that it's a good measure of "quality" (as in, technical design choices). We live in a path-dependent world rife with network effects, so quality per se just doesn't matter all that much, and non-technical factors like "being backed by a major corporation" can matter a lot. I'm sure there's more Visual Basic in the wild than Go, but I'd hardly use that to argue that it's a superior language, or that Go proponents are "abstract language tourists".
- trhway 12y ago
  >But that doesn't mean they "had full awareness of every language feature available in the alternatives", and even if they did, smart people are still susceptible to the blub paradox. i hope you're just not aware whom you're talking about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_%28programming_language%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_%28programming_language%29: "Go, ..., is a programming language initially developed at Google[6] in 2007 by Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, and Ken Thompson." Suggesting application of Blub paradox to the people who invented Unix ...
  - kvb 12y ago
    I think the blub paradox applies to everyone. Unless you spend time using a feature in earnest, it is easy to convince yourself that it's not valuable. Do you have reason to disagree?
    - warfangle 12y ago
      That's potentially true. On the other hand, unless you spend a lot of time using a feature in earnest, it's hard to know that the feature is actually not necessary because it's an enormous workaround for something else.
    - trhway 12y ago
      >I think the blub paradox applies to everyone. no offense, man, yet this your statement is an example of the blub paradox. "But when our hypothetical Blub programmer looks in the other direction, up the power continuum, he doesn't realize he's looking up. What he sees are merely weird languages. He probably considers them about equivalent in power to Blub ..." it is like you looking up at Thompson and not realizing that you're looking up. You probably consider Thompson equivalent to you and everyone. (Again, no offense intended, though i can see how it can sound kind of offensive).
  - pjmlp 12y ago
    > Suggesting application of Blub paradox to the people who invented Unix ... Who mean the same people that disregarded memory safe system programming languages and decided to create their own "unsafe by default" one? The same people that created a text based operating system, while at Xerox PARC GUI based workstations were being developed in memory safe system programming languages?
    - sitkack 12y ago
      I was thinking about how much space they saved in their C strings by having a null byte instead of the Pascal style pointer and length struct ... on their original 16 bit systems, it was one. One byte! So much pain was caused by that decision.
- warfangle 12y ago
  > But that doesn't mean they "had full awareness of every language feature available in the alternatives", and even if they did, smart people are still susceptible to the blub paradox. I'm pretty sure Ken Thompson &co were fully aware of generics and sum types (to use your own example). It trades the implicit complication of implementing and using those (and other) features for strong concurrency. For a lot of people, that's a good tradeoff to make.

by personZ 12y ago

kvb 12y ago

Perhaps we're talking past each other - I'm certainly not saying Go should be Haskell (I've never even written a Haskell program!). Go's designers are clearly not stupid, and many people seem quite satisfied with their design choices. But that doesn't mean they "had full awareness of every language feature available in the alternatives", and even if they did, smart people are still susceptible to the blub paradox. As for use in production, I agree that it can be a fair barometer for "utility", but I strongly disagree that it's a good measure of "quality" (as in, technical design choices). We live in a path-dependent world rife with network effects, so quality per se just doesn't matter all that much, and non-technical factors like "being backed by a major corporation" can matter a lot. I'm sure there's more Visual Basic in the wild than Go, but I'd hardly use that to argue that it's a superior language, or that Go proponents are "abstract language tourists".

trhway 12y ago
>But that doesn't mean they "had full awareness of every language feature available in the alternatives", and even if they did, smart people are still susceptible to the blub paradox. i hope you're just not aware whom you're talking about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_%28programming_language%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_%28programming_language%29: "Go, ..., is a programming language initially developed at Google[6] in 2007 by Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, and Ken Thompson." Suggesting application of Blub paradox to the people who invented Unix ...
- kvb 12y ago
  I think the blub paradox applies to everyone. Unless you spend time using a feature in earnest, it is easy to convince yourself that it's not valuable. Do you have reason to disagree?
  - warfangle 12y ago
    That's potentially true. On the other hand, unless you spend a lot of time using a feature in earnest, it's hard to know that the feature is actually not necessary because it's an enormous workaround for something else.
  - trhway 12y ago
    >I think the blub paradox applies to everyone. no offense, man, yet this your statement is an example of the blub paradox. "But when our hypothetical Blub programmer looks in the other direction, up the power continuum, he doesn't realize he's looking up. What he sees are merely weird languages. He probably considers them about equivalent in power to Blub ..." it is like you looking up at Thompson and not realizing that you're looking up. You probably consider Thompson equivalent to you and everyone. (Again, no offense intended, though i can see how it can sound kind of offensive).
- pjmlp 12y ago
  > Suggesting application of Blub paradox to the people who invented Unix ... Who mean the same people that disregarded memory safe system programming languages and decided to create their own "unsafe by default" one? The same people that created a text based operating system, while at Xerox PARC GUI based workstations were being developed in memory safe system programming languages?
  - sitkack 12y ago
    I was thinking about how much space they saved in their C strings by having a null byte instead of the Pascal style pointer and length struct ... on their original 16 bit systems, it was one. One byte! So much pain was caused by that decision.
warfangle 12y ago
> But that doesn't mean they "had full awareness of every language feature available in the alternatives", and even if they did, smart people are still susceptible to the blub paradox. I'm pretty sure Ken Thompson &co were fully aware of generics and sum types (to use your own example). It trades the implicit complication of implementing and using those (and other) features for strong concurrency. For a lot of people, that's a good tradeoff to make.