8 ms·

I think this is part of it, some of the hate comes from people that "know better" (possibly true for some, obviously the Go authors aren't omnipotent) than the

by howeyc 11y ago

I think this is part of it, some of the hate comes from people that "know better" (possibly true for some, obviously the Go authors aren't omnipotent) than the Go language designers and are baffled that the language design ideas they know about aren't in the language. But I can tell you in my experience that this type of forceful "everything is a error, no warnings" and "it is done this way (formatting for instance)" are a breath of fresh air. Having dealt with team members that barely know how to program and think a compiler spitting out an executable means it's ready (what warnings? why do those matter, it compiled), Go makes coordinating with them a lot easier. It forces them to be more correct before an executable is created. It doesn't make them better, but at least the rest of the team can work with what they create until they do get better. Also, the simplicity of the language sure helps everybody (regardless of skill) get up to speed quickly. People that know what they're doing may hate there isn't some special feature they love (generics, etc) in the language, but working with a team of varied skill is so much easier this way. In before "but adding generics does not make team projects harder, look at language ..."

wiremine 11y ago
> ...are a breath of fresh air... Agreed. Go lacks many things, but the "zen" of Go is wonderful feature most people aren't aware of, or under appreciate. I wouldn't use Go for everything, but I wouldn't dismiss it because it doesn't have a favorite language feature.
- chimeracoder 11y ago
  > Agreed. Go lacks many things, but the "zen" of Go is wonderful feature most people aren't aware of, or under appreciate. It's funny that you use the word "Zen" - about two years ago, I gave a talk about Go to the New York Python Meetup about why I switched to Go[0], and the punchline was that Go fits the Zen of Python[1] better than Python does[2]. [0] Before anyone gets upset - they asked me to speak, and they were genuinely happy with the presentation. It's not like I went in there to troll with a talk on "This is why your language sucks"! [1] https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0020/ https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0020/ [2] If anyone's interested, these were the slides: https://s3.amazonaws.com/golangweekly/go_for_pythonistas.pdf https://s3.amazonaws.com/golangweekly/go_for_pythonistas.pdf
jkyle 11y ago
> Go makes coordinating with them a lot easier. What I like about strongly opinionated languages in general is that most of the strong opinions are around trivial features of the languages relative to the complexity of a decently interesting programming problem. Features like formatting, no unused imports, etc. These are typically areas in a project where Parkinson's Law of Triviality rears its ugly head in project planning meetings. Everyone feels the need to bloviate about 2 vs 4 indents, tabs vs spaces, or which lint flags to enable/disable. Hell, with go get always grabbing the master branch, it even implicitly requires projects to keep their master branch 'green' so it doesn't break projects that depend on it. A very neat way to eliminate a whole set of "Which branching model should we use?" arguments.
- lmm 11y ago
  I agree with a lot of these (and would be interested in adopting a language that followed them - but one with a decent type system), but I don't think that's the Go innovation. Python had opinions about whitespace and never attracted the same level of hate.
  - lobster_johnson 11y ago
    Python's whitespace has arguably produced metric tons of heated discussion on the net since Python's inception. Back in the day it was often the main thing outsiders (jwz comes to mind) rejected.
    - JulianMorrison 11y ago
      That and also, that Python has a very Go-like attitude of "do it our way, no, your way has been disabled, our way is the only way." Arguably, that also explains its success.
  - barosl 11y ago
    I think Python's mandatory whitespace has a similar nature as Go's unused-as-an-error. They are definitely great in production code, but when I play with code, sometimes I do want to mess them up while adding and removing the parts of the code. Even though I've used Python for more than 10 years, I often feel like "I don't want to indent these lines for now. I wish there were a way to wrap them up without changing the indentation" after copying and pasting some lines.
adrusi 11y ago
In before "but adding generics does not make team projects harder, look at language ..." Your (and many other people's) insistence on dismissing discussion regarding generics as some kind of a joke is anti-intellectual. You're rejecting valid criticism of your arguments on the basis that the critic's argument is unworthy of attention for some reason external to the discussion at hand. I agree that pro-generics arguments are usually boring, and at least 90% of what they say has been heard before. But the same can be said of Go evangelism, like your comment; they are no less worthy. Please don't deliberately shut down discussion.
- nemothekid 11y ago
  I don't even get the vitriol against generics - the designers have only taken a "not now" approach to the subject and everyone acts as if Go is a social experiment to get everyone mad about generics. Then people bring Rust, which has only had a stable grammar for last couple months and a standard library nowhere near Gos. Would it be wise to complain that the Rust stdlib doesn't contain a HTTP server implementation?
  - Scarbutt 11y ago
    Rust's stdlib not containing a HTTP server is a deliberate act.
    - ori_b 11y ago
      Go not including generics is a deliberate act.
      - heinrich5991 11y ago
        A web server can easily be implemented as a library, generics are a language feature.
        EugeneOZ 11y ago
        And library can be easily abandoned or just be broken after breaking changes in next version of language, and you will have to wait couple of months, while this issue will be solved. Or just fix all the things yourself.

by howeyc 11y ago

wiremine 11y ago

> ...are a breath of fresh air... Agreed. Go lacks many things, but the "zen" of Go is wonderful feature most people aren't aware of, or under appreciate. I wouldn't use Go for everything, but I wouldn't dismiss it because it doesn't have a favorite language feature.

chimeracoder 11y ago
> Agreed. Go lacks many things, but the "zen" of Go is wonderful feature most people aren't aware of, or under appreciate. It's funny that you use the word "Zen" - about two years ago, I gave a talk about Go to the New York Python Meetup about why I switched to Go[0], and the punchline was that Go fits the Zen of Python[1] better than Python does[2]. [0] Before anyone gets upset - they asked me to speak, and they were genuinely happy with the presentation. It's not like I went in there to troll with a talk on "This is why your language sucks"! [1] https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0020/ https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0020/ [2] If anyone's interested, these were the slides: https://s3.amazonaws.com/golangweekly/go_for_pythonistas.pdf https://s3.amazonaws.com/golangweekly/go_for_pythonistas.pdf

jkyle 11y ago

> Go makes coordinating with them a lot easier. What I like about strongly opinionated languages in general is that most of the strong opinions are around trivial features of the languages relative to the complexity of a decently interesting programming problem. Features like formatting, no unused imports, etc. These are typically areas in a project where Parkinson's Law of Triviality rears its ugly head in project planning meetings. Everyone feels the need to bloviate about 2 vs 4 indents, tabs vs spaces, or which lint flags to enable/disable. Hell, with go get always grabbing the master branch, it even implicitly requires projects to keep their master branch 'green' so it doesn't break projects that depend on it. A very neat way to eliminate a whole set of "Which branching model should we use?" arguments.

lmm 11y ago
I agree with a lot of these (and would be interested in adopting a language that followed them - but one with a decent type system), but I don't think that's the Go innovation. Python had opinions about whitespace and never attracted the same level of hate.
- lobster_johnson 11y ago
  Python's whitespace has arguably produced metric tons of heated discussion on the net since Python's inception. Back in the day it was often the main thing outsiders (jwz comes to mind) rejected.
  - JulianMorrison 11y ago
    That and also, that Python has a very Go-like attitude of "do it our way, no, your way has been disabled, our way is the only way." Arguably, that also explains its success.
- barosl 11y ago
  I think Python's mandatory whitespace has a similar nature as Go's unused-as-an-error. They are definitely great in production code, but when I play with code, sometimes I do want to mess them up while adding and removing the parts of the code. Even though I've used Python for more than 10 years, I often feel like "I don't want to indent these lines for now. I wish there were a way to wrap them up without changing the indentation" after copying and pasting some lines.

adrusi 11y ago

In before "but adding generics does not make team projects harder, look at language ..." Your (and many other people's) insistence on dismissing discussion regarding generics as some kind of a joke is anti-intellectual. You're rejecting valid criticism of your arguments on the basis that the critic's argument is unworthy of attention for some reason external to the discussion at hand. I agree that pro-generics arguments are usually boring, and at least 90% of what they say has been heard before. But the same can be said of Go evangelism, like your comment; they are no less worthy. Please don't deliberately shut down discussion.

nemothekid 11y ago
I don't even get the vitriol against generics - the designers have only taken a "not now" approach to the subject and everyone acts as if Go is a social experiment to get everyone mad about generics. Then people bring Rust, which has only had a stable grammar for last couple months and a standard library nowhere near Gos. Would it be wise to complain that the Rust stdlib doesn't contain a HTTP server implementation?
- Scarbutt 11y ago
  Rust's stdlib not containing a HTTP server is a deliberate act.
  - ori_b 11y ago
    Go not including generics is a deliberate act.
    - heinrich5991 11y ago
      A web server can easily be implemented as a library, generics are a language feature.
      - EugeneOZ 11y ago
        And library can be easily abandoned or just be broken after breaking changes in next version of language, and you will have to wait couple of months, while this issue will be solved. Or just fix all the things yourself.