[grepexdev]

I understand what you are saying here but I think you've missed the point of what Pike was getting at.

I think Pike is acknowledging the practical realities of engineering at scale, and intentionally designed Go with simplicity in mind, which leads to more maintainable code and faster onboarding for new devs.

I'll also add that outside of the popularity metric, Go is not all bad. Fast compile times, readability, excellent standard library and toolchain, backward compatibility, to name a few things.

[ninetyninenine]

>I think Pike is acknowledging the practical realities of engineering at scale, and intentionally designed Go with simplicity in mind, which leads to more maintainable code and faster onboarding for new devs.

Doubt it. Read what he wrote. He's literally referring to people without much experience in programming. The stuff you said is literally NOT what he said.

>I'll also add that outside of the popularity metric, Go is not all bad. Fast compile times, readability, excellent standard library and toolchain, backward compatibility, to name a few things.

I agree with readability and fast compile times.

[grepexdev]

Pike didn't write it, he said it. (1) It is a talk about how Go was created to make concurrency simple. The "brilliant" language he refers to here is C++, which I'm sure you're aware has many of its own downsides.

Your argument that Go is a step backward because it was intentionally designed to be simple for novice programmers seems flawed. It's design was a deliberate tradeoff to address a specific problem. While I don't think it is a language that should be used for everything, it is good at the things it is good at.

What is it about Go that you have a problem with, specifically?

1. Around the 20 minute mark: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/shows/lang-next-2014/from-...

[ninetyninenine]

I understand he said it. But I can’t transmit voice over HN so I need you to read the transcript I made oof what he said rather then listen to it. I’m actually really confused why you couldn’t figure out this is what I meant. I could make a link and point you to the time like you did, but it’s easier to refer to it with an actual written version. Make sense? I hope so.

> The "brilliant" language he refers to here is C++, which I'm sure you're aware has many of its own downsides.

No. The brilliant language he’s referring to is a hypothetical one he could have created. Instead he created golang because he needed to create a language catered to people with less experience. That is what he is saying. I find it strange that you can literally read what is written and also reference the video and literally not understand what was literally said/written.

Maybe you’re just making up meaning subconsciously to cater to your own biases rather then facing the cold hard truth that pike created go to be not “brilliant”.

> What is it about Go that you have a problem with, specifically?

Oh there’s tons of stuff. One is that errors don’t have stack traces. You create an error that can’t be handled and so it bubbles up the stack until the only way to handle it is with a panic. You see the panic in your logs but now you have no idea where the error came from because no stack trace. You get the trace of the panic but no trace of the error. The whole thing is just poorly thought out.

[grepexdev]

The reason I emphasize that he said it and didn't write it is because it indicated to me that you weren't aware it was actually a talk he gave and you were just regurgitating a cherry picked quote that's been passed around since he said it.

That further indicated to me that you are not aware of the broader context of what he was saying. He literally spends the first 19 minutes talking about writing something in C++, then says the quote.

It seems it is you who is catering to your own biases by using a few sentences from a 20 minute talk to oversimplify what Pike I'd saying.

The interpretation I am giving is based on the entire talk, not just the quote. I acknowledge that he said Go was created for less experienced devs, but I don't think it that means it is a step backward as you said. It enables so much to be done by the "dumber" demographic, as you so eloquently put it. Go, like any other language, has its limitations. It shouldn't be used for everything, but should be used for the things it is good at (obviously).