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by owlstuffing 95 days ago
Go can't compete with Java bc it's not in the same category as Java.

- Java is a high-level, multi-paradigm programming language

- Go is designed as a systems language to supersede C projects at Google

Now Go identifies as a general purpose language that competes with Java? It's a free country, I guess.
2 comments
gf000 95 days ago
How is Go not high level? What makes it "systems" language? That's just marketing.

It is a language with a fat runtime, running a garbage collector. You just burn it into the binary and call it a day.

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Tostino 95 days ago
(just like modern Java can burn its runtime / GC into the binary)
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Mawr 95 days ago
No, not just like. You're downplaying significant differences between the two that do in fact matter. So much so in fact, that you're just wrong. Stop spreading misinformation.
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gf000 95 days ago
GraalVM indeed does a lot more than Go, it's a full optimizing compiler while Go does very little optimiations.

But burning a JVM next to a jar file is not hard at all, one could make something like cosmopolitan.

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zadikian 95 days ago
Go use cases overlap the most with Java. I think the reputation you mentioned comes from Google using a lot of C++ for high-level things others would likely do in Java, so they see Go as a replacement for C++ in some areas. (assuming you meant C++ not C)
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owlstuffing 95 days ago
> I think the reputation you mentioned. . .

Actually no. Go was designed from the beginning as a systems language as a C replacement.

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gf000 94 days ago
In what way does that "design" show up in Go, besides marketing?
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owlstuffing 94 days ago
It's replete with oddities and limitations that signal "ah, this is because systems language."

Go’s type system, for example, is very much a systems-language artifact. The designers chose structural typing because it was lighter weight, but provided enough type safety to get by. It sucks though for enterprise app development where your team (and your tooling) are desperate for nominal typing clarity and determinism.

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zadikian 94 days ago
The error handling is like a systems language for sure, I'll agree on that.

But where do Go's docs or founders call it a C replacement? gf000 asked where this is mentioned besides marketing, but I don't see it in the marketing either.

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owlstuffing 94 days ago
Now that Go is styled as a Java competitor its framing is different. But here's an old golang.org archive for fun:

https://web.archive.org/web/20091113154831/http://golang.org...

The main page title *Go: a systems programming language*

It still sports all the low-level stuff too, pointer arithmetic and all.

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