4 ms·

Compilation speed was just a gimmick anyway; the compiler is fast because it doesn't do many expensive optimizations. It was like bragging that using "-O0" mak

Compilation speed was just a gimmick anyway; the compiler is fast because it doesn't do many expensive optimizations. It was like bragging that using "-O0" makes a compiler so fast. There are languages that require a lot of work just to compile at all, like C++, but for most languages slow compilation is more a measure of how advanced the compiler is. And it's not just the compiler, the linker didn't even know if a package is used or not, which is why you have to manually remove unused imports (otherwise they would be linked in, bloating the binary).

zackbloom 11y ago
This is the nature of a priority. They are saying they value compilation speed more than the maintainers of C might, and are willing to sacrifice other things (like runtime speed) in that interest.
tyho 11y ago
This is plain wrong, the main reason the compiler is fast according to the authors[1] is because it handles dependencies more sanely than C/C++. https://talks.golang.org/2012/splash.article https://talks.golang.org/2012/splash.article
- codemac 11y ago
  You're more than welcome to write C in the fashion that the go compiler enforces, and get much faster builds. Their compiler is young and immature relative to things like GCC and stating that it may be missing expensive optimization features is not "plain wrong".
  - tyho 11y ago
    That suggestion is not really practical as you need to make the same requirement from all your third party libraries. While gcc will spend more time optimizing than go, the main reason for the speed difference at the moment IS unnecessary work done by the preprocessor because of the primitive importing.
    - pcwalton 11y ago
      No, it's not, unless you count time spent compiling inlined functions and templates as "preprocessing time" (which it isn't—it's compilation time). Time the difference between clang++ on -O0 versus -O3 if you don't believe me.
bradfitz 11y ago
Others already pointed out that paragraph 1 isn't really correct. I need to point out that your second point about the linker is totally false. The linker knows and does drop unreferenced code. The import strictness is a language requirement and comes from experience with large codebases at Google and elsewhere. Use goimports in your editor's save hook and don't think about it.
- tyho 11y ago
  It probably takes more effort to write a whiny blog post about the imports behaviour than hooking goimports on save.

zackbloom 11y ago

This is the nature of a priority. They are saying they value compilation speed more than the maintainers of C might, and are willing to sacrifice other things (like runtime speed) in that interest.

tyho 11y ago

This is plain wrong, the main reason the compiler is fast according to the authors[1] is because it handles dependencies more sanely than C/C++. https://talks.golang.org/2012/splash.article https://talks.golang.org/2012/splash.article

codemac 11y ago
You're more than welcome to write C in the fashion that the go compiler enforces, and get much faster builds. Their compiler is young and immature relative to things like GCC and stating that it may be missing expensive optimization features is not "plain wrong".
- tyho 11y ago
  That suggestion is not really practical as you need to make the same requirement from all your third party libraries. While gcc will spend more time optimizing than go, the main reason for the speed difference at the moment IS unnecessary work done by the preprocessor because of the primitive importing.
  - pcwalton 11y ago
    No, it's not, unless you count time spent compiling inlined functions and templates as "preprocessing time" (which it isn't—it's compilation time). Time the difference between clang++ on -O0 versus -O3 if you don't believe me.

bradfitz 11y ago

Others already pointed out that paragraph 1 isn't really correct. I need to point out that your second point about the linker is totally false. The linker knows and does drop unreferenced code. The import strictness is a language requirement and comes from experience with large codebases at Google and elsewhere. Use goimports in your editor's save hook and don't think about it.

tyho 11y ago
It probably takes more effort to write a whiny blog post about the imports behaviour than hooking goimports on save.