

Google Go captures developers' imaginations - marketer
http://www.thestandard.com/news/2010/02/26/google-go-captures-developers-imaginations

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TomOfTTB
I'm past the point where I get particularly excited only any given language
only because most great features get adapted by other languages before too
long. As it is I don't see anything in Go that's significant enough to make me
switch.

But what I think Google does need, and what Go could do for them, is to give
them a standardized language. One of the things Microsoft does very well with
C# is to make sure it works across the board. If you are a C# developer you
have access to everything Microsoft does. You can still choose another
language like Java, VB.Net, Python, etc... but C# is like a promise that it
will work everywhere Microsoft is.

Google doesn't have that right now and I think it inhibits their efforts to
recruit developers to their various efforts.

~~~
GeorgeTirebiter
I think that's an interesting point, but wouldn't computer language polyglots
actually be the sort of engineers that Google is trying to snare?

~~~
rdtsc
Yes, that's what I think.

Google seems to emphasize diversity and thinking outside the box (well at
least from what I can see through the PR window and personal stories).

I think having one language do everything is not feasible. Some languages are
good for system programming and are good for performance computing (I use C),
some are good for what is not performance critical but are more concise and
clear (I use Python for that). Go wants to do both, but from what I see in
their benchmarks it is the worst of both worlds. I want it to be as fast as C,
but even then I'll still fall back on Python probably for clarity and
concision. So ideally I would want Python to be as fast as C -- not going to
happen anytime soon.

What a company should promote is a common protocol for encoding and
transmitting data i.e. protobuf -- that is a much better thing to have than
looking for one perfect language that does it all.

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mkramlich
Syntax is important to me. Even if I know a language has certain great
features, if the syntax itself doesn't appeal to me, it's hard for me to take
it up. Go, Erlang, Scala and Ruby all fall in this category for me.
Individually I appreciate certain aspects about each of them. But I don't care
for their syntax. They repel rather than attract me.

I want something like Lispythonlang. One of you guys, go make that for me.
I'll be taking a nap over here in the corner. K thanks bye.

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brianobush
I am looking forwards to a new system programming language - hopefully it
matures well in the next few years. I still love C, but would love to be able
to work in a little bit higher language. I have python for high level work.
Will have to give go a try for my next tool app.

~~~
mkramlich
check out D, by Walter Bright of Digital Mars

it is older than Go

Bright is an old skool C/C++ compiler writer from the 80's. Seems to know his
stuff. Co-authored one of my favorite computer games of all time too, Empire.

~~~
rdtsc
I looked at D. But it is lacking good "batteries" -- standard libraries
(Phobos? Tango?).

For a language to be useful it has to have a very good standard library.
Preferable one good standard library. That is probably the main reason why
Python and Java became popular.

I picked Python over Ruby because it had a better standard library. Using Java
after years of using C++ with various standard and not-so-standard libraries,
was a breath of fresh air.

I liked D as a language, but I didn't like its librar(y|ies) so I discarded
it.

~~~
jussij
I tink they are planning to fix this in the upcoming D2 release.

For this next release a lot of effort has gone into improving the Phobos
library and I think this next release will also let Phobos and Tango work
together.

------
ThinkWriteMute
Yet Go still remains as syntax clunky/ugly as ever.

~~~
zach
For syntax, ugly yet familiar is more successful than obscure yet beautiful
nine times out of ten.

~~~
dschobel
How can you possibly substantiate that statement?

~~~
jacquesm
java:lisp

~~~
dschobel
perl:python

Hey this is fun! Now you do one again.

~~~
zach
Please. Python is so wildly C-like that it uses zero/non-zero for conditions.

~~~
dschobel
You're either being willfully ignorant or insincere now. Allowing non-boolean
values in boolean clauses originated with lisp back in 1960. Furthermore, GvR
is on the record as saying that his main influence for python was ABC.

