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by andreimackenzie 839 days ago
Simplicity is a feature. Sure, how complicated can effective enums really be, but Go's general philosophy is to think hard (& sometimes for a long time) before adding every bell and whistle.

I have a far easier time delving in to previously unknown Go code for the first time compared to something like Scala (or even Java). Go is a solid language for those who value that and want to enable the experience for others.

2 comments

Simplicity can be taken too far. Take this to its logical close cousin and you would have Forth or Basic.

Also, we have been doing computer language design for quite awhile now. This isn’t a new frontier. The deficiencies in Go aren’t in areas of “oh, we never thought of that!”, but are in very well known areas with known solutions.

I find Go code is obscured with house keeping code that isn’t necessary in better languages.

That simplicity can lead to more complex and hard to read/support code.

For example, to encode a JSON structure with a dynamic top-level key you need to write a custom marshaller OR marshal twice. That's... awful. Like bonkers level insane.