dotconferences
7 HN recommenders · recommended in 13 months, 2016–2023
23:12 · 172K views · Dec 2, 2015
Rob Pike's dotGo 2015 talk argues that Go only seems simple, and that its simplicity hides real complexity that is part of the design. He explains the thinking behind Go's restraint in features.
HN returns to it to explain why Go deliberately resists syntactic sugar and new features.
14 comments from Hacker News
The creators of Go are Rob Pike and Google. I think they would know if a different GC were better and use it. I used to sometimes doubt Rob Pike too and think Go had made some mistakes. After using Go and listening to his talks (like [0]) I realized how wrong I was. There's a reason he has helped build two wildly successful programming languages.. How many have you built? Are you smarter than Google? In the end, embracing Rob Pike's brilliant decisions and taste has made my programming life so much simpler and better. I switched to Acme [1], turned off syntax highlighting on Gitub PR reviews with a userscript[2], and my life is infinitely simpler. Rob Pike has been right on so many things and has made Go successful. I'm sure if a generational GC were better for Go, he would have built and used it, so you're obviously wrong. [0]: this video [1]: [LINK] [2]: [LINK]
To me it feels like apples to oranges comparison. I watched this talk on strangeloop a long time ago, and a version of this talk given on RailsConf recently (watched recently, not given). Here's what I see on the page: > Complex constructs: State, Object, Methods, Syntax, Inheritance, Switch/matching, Vars, Imperative loops, Actors, ORM, Conditionals. > Simple constructs: Values, Functions, Namespaces, Data, Polymorphism, Managed refs, Set functions, Queues, Declarative data manipulation, Rules, Consistency. And to dig deeper, it makes sense to search for "why state is bad", "why inheritance is harmful", "avoid conditionals", etc., and read whatever you find interesting. Go has particularly simple syntax. Here's a talk by Rob Pike about simplicity, syntax, and language feature you might find interesting this video
Recently the Go team decided not to add the try-keyword to the language. I'm not a Go programmer and was a bit stumped by the decision until I saw a talk of Rob Pike regarding the fundamental principle of Go to stick to simplicity first. [1] One of the takeaways is, that most languages and their features converge to a point, where each language contains all the features of the other languages. C++, Java and C# are primary examples. At the same time complexity increases. Go is different, because of the simplicity first rule. It easens the burden on the programmer and on the maintainer. I think python would definitely profit from such a mindset. [1] this video
the key is simplicity, you're complaining about language features that allow you to write "fun" code, but remember that we spend around 80% of the time reading or debugging code, the main focus of Go is about writing code that's easy to read which will allow you to scale a project or source code with more people, also remember that easy doesn't mean simple, I think these 2 talks will make you understand my idea a little bit better: this video [LINK]
I hadn't been particularly enthusiastic about Go but in the end Rob Pike won me over - "Simplicity is Complicated": this video A powerful talk on Silicon Valley history by Kelsey Gilmore-Innis - "What Tech Workers Can Learn From Harry Bridges": [LINK]