Flutterby™! : A critique of Go

A critique of Go

2018-03-19 20:19:50.761133+00 by Dan Lyke 3 comments

Lawrence Kestaloot: Ten reasons why I don't like Golang.

I looked a little bit at Go, saw that its performance numbers weren't great and went back to C++ (personal projects) and Python (where I have to work collaboratively) and Java (legacy code). It still intrigues me, but I think these are some interesting critiques...

On the other hand, on the collaborative C++ project I've got going I have been bad about coding styles, need to do some refactoring, and am not sure I mind having coding styles dictated by the language.

comments in ascending chronological order (reverse):

#Comment Re: A critique of Go made: 2018-03-20 03:13:49.552228+00 by: Jack William Bell [edit history]

Wow. I've used Go on just one large project and I didn't like it much (it's picky about the wrong things for one). Basically I disliked it about as much as I dislike ObjectiveC, but for different reasons. In other words, I would use it for another project if it was a requirement and I wouldn't complain too much.

However Lawrence has clearly thought it through and damn near everything he mentions is pretty much a deal killer for a big project. Maybe the only thing I don't feel about as strongly as he does is the ternary operator. (It's nice, but frankly not as readable as an if/else statement.)

#Comment Re: A critique of Go made: 2018-03-20 09:05:22.44008+00 by: spc476

Go is a proprietary language meant for Google and Google only. It's unusual that they make it available for others to use, but I think that's only to con most programmers into using it so they can cut down on training costs.

Rob Pike comes across as a patronizing dictator of language design---it's his way or get out. He doesn't trust programmers and it shows (neither did James Gosling with Java and it too, shows). Remember---this is Google, where they have a billion lines of code and they want replaceable ~~cogs~~ programmers fresh out of college so they're cheaper (and have less experience thus the distrust).

Go does not encode style in the language definition; it's just that everyone is expected to use gofmt (and I'll occasionally troll by saying Rob Pike wimped out by not enforcing the style in the language).

#Comment Re: A critique of Go made: 2018-03-21 16:13:21.999059+00 by: Dan Lyke

Elf Sternberg had some notes: http://www.elfsternberg.com/20...otebook-march-20th-golang-stuff/

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