I would argue Go is a poorly designed language, though people are free to their opinions. Keeping things like null pointers when other languages got rid of them entirely (or used union type proofs to ensure they could not be referenced). The lack of tuples, pattern matching, enums, return ADT, etc. make it unwieldly to use in practice and verbose in nature. Sure, it is "simple", but that isn't the goal... the goal is to make it "easy" for the users to write correct programs.
The article also highlights explicit errors vs. exceptions. Sure, I would agree, but that isn't the only comparison. The best comparison would be via "return ADTs" ala Rust (and they could have been special cased for a return type as Go's designers did for special generic list/maps) which make it possible to disambiguate errors from valid return values without risk of error.
> the goal is to make it "easy" for the users to write correct programs.
I've only ever dabbled in Golang, but isn't the goal of Go ultimately to make it easy for devs to maintain programs with their hyperfocus on non-breaking changes and backwards compatibility (With previous versions)? It's less about being easy/nice to write the first time, but that you don't have to re-write it again and again with each version change, no?
I'm not saying the OP Article is correct, again, not familiar enough with the language to comment on that, but the whole reason I keep wanting to adopt it (just don't have the time) is everyone I know that uses it always sings its praises for the above features. Seems to be the defining point that drives it's adoption, at least among those I interface with.
I'm not sure how making the language more expressive and less prone to errors makes programs more difficult to maintain? I'm not suggesting they keep adding new features and I do think they got that right. Too many languages keep bloating their languages with new features. A small feature set is the right goal, but I just think they picked the wrong feature set. The features are too primitive and put the burden onto their users vs. the lang devs.
There is no inherent correct or not, just opinion. If Go meets your needs, go for it (pun not intended, but still comical lol). I honestly don't think the ideal language exists (and it will look a little different for everyone), but something between Rust and Go with a little bit of OOP would be a sweet spot I think.
> the goal is to make it "easy" for the users to write correct programs
Whose goal are we discussing here? Go's principal design philosophy is to keep the language explicit and straightforward, so you can quickly bring new people on board and maintain code you have never seen before without too much hassle. Even reading through the standard library codebase should not require much more than a basic grasp of the syntax. In that sense, I believe Go is very well designed.
It's a great language... That was quickly overshadowed by Rust.
Rust is significantly more difficult, but faster and has more hype.
I would love Go that has been optimized to beat Rust. It's actually a really easy language I wouldn't mind working in. Feels like someone made Python you can complie.v
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The article also highlights explicit errors vs. exceptions. Sure, I would agree, but that isn't the only comparison. The best comparison would be via "return ADTs" ala Rust (and they could have been special cased for a return type as Go's designers did for special generic list/maps) which make it possible to disambiguate errors from valid return values without risk of error.
I've only ever dabbled in Golang, but isn't the goal of Go ultimately to make it easy for devs to maintain programs with their hyperfocus on non-breaking changes and backwards compatibility (With previous versions)? It's less about being easy/nice to write the first time, but that you don't have to re-write it again and again with each version change, no?
I'm not saying the OP Article is correct, again, not familiar enough with the language to comment on that, but the whole reason I keep wanting to adopt it (just don't have the time) is everyone I know that uses it always sings its praises for the above features. Seems to be the defining point that drives it's adoption, at least among those I interface with.
There is no inherent correct or not, just opinion. If Go meets your needs, go for it (pun not intended, but still comical lol). I honestly don't think the ideal language exists (and it will look a little different for everyone), but something between Rust and Go with a little bit of OOP would be a sweet spot I think.
Whose goal are we discussing here? Go's principal design philosophy is to keep the language explicit and straightforward, so you can quickly bring new people on board and maintain code you have never seen before without too much hassle. Even reading through the standard library codebase should not require much more than a basic grasp of the syntax. In that sense, I believe Go is very well designed.
Rust is significantly more difficult, but faster and has more hype.
I would love Go that has been optimized to beat Rust. It's actually a really easy language I wouldn't mind working in. Feels like someone made Python you can complie.v
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