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by roestava 5334 days ago
I'm sorry to say, but I think the Go programming language has just been owned by this Extend programming language for Java. Go missed the boat when it did not include some minimum class support to appease the developers used to Java, C++, and so on.
3 comments
cmars 5334 days ago
I develop with Eclipse and MDD at my day job, Go in my side projects. I'll definitely evaluate Extend for the day job enterprisey stuff, but in Go, I don't miss the class hierarchy at all; I find it very refreshing.
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roestava 5334 days ago
Go is cool. Go isn't too fast and doesn't have as much tool support as Java/Xtend. Go may be great if you're doing network programming on Linux. Like many tools originating from Unix environments, the cross-platform support may not be a top priority.

You're set as you already use Eclipse. :-)

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luriel 5333 days ago
Go's cross-platform portability is quite good, writing portable Go code is infinitely easier than writing portable C or C++ code, and probably as easy or more than Java.
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luriel 5333 days ago
One of the reasons Go programmers love it because it does not appease Java and C++ developers.

On the other hand Go for the most part appeases C developers quite nicely.

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Sandman 5334 days ago
Isn't comparing Go to Xtend something like comparing apples to oranges? The first one is a language that can be used for low-level development. The other one provides a nicer syntax and some cool features for Java. If anything, it can be compared to Cofeescript which basically does the same thing for Javascript.
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roestava 5334 days ago
It's not an easy comparison to make, yes. But Go isn't really that low level. It has garbage collector, type inference, unique concurrency support that hides threads... And it's provided on App Engine.

App Engine also supports Python and Java. I figure folks could use Xtend to write Java web apps that cut some of the boilerplate and perhaps even deploy to App Engine, for instance. Giving folks an alternative to going with Go as a static typed language.

Perhaps Xtend using Java source-code as an intermediate medium confuses people a little. Using Eclipse to program using Xtend/Java may just be too seamless for it not to matter much after you've grown used to it.

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luriel 5333 days ago
Go still compiles to native code and provides direct control over the memory layout of your data structures.

This alone makes it considerably more low level than anything that runs on the JVM.

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