Arto's Notes re: Go

Installation

$ brew install go
$ export GOPATH=/opt/go
$ export GOROOT=/opt/homebrew/opt/go/libexec
$ export PATH="$PATH:$GOROOT/bin"
$ mkdir -p /opt/go && chown arto:staff /opt/go

Configuration

$ alias repclient='repclient -socksserver 127.0.0.1:9150'

Scripting

///usr/bin/env go run "$0" "$@"; exit "$?"

Audience

Much like Java a decade prior, Go was designed by experienced programmers for inexperienced programmers to use:

"The key point here is our programmers are Googlers, they're not researchers. They're typically, fairly young, fresh out of school, probably learned Java, maybe learned C or C++, probably learned Python. They're not capable of understanding a brilliant language but we want to use them to build good software. So, the language that we give them has to be easy for them to understand and easy to adopt."

"It must be familiar, roughly C-like. Programmers working at Google are early in their careers and are most familiar with procedural languages, particularly from the C family. The need to get programmers productive quickly in a new language means that the language cannot be too radical."

Critiques

• Go is unapologetically flawed, here's why we use it (HN: 2015)

  "To put it mildly, Go's type system is impaired. It does not lend itself to writing quality, maintainable code at a large scale, which seems to be in stark contrast to the language's ambitions."

• Why Go's design is a disservice to intelligent programmers (HN: 2015)

  "Pike is basically saying that the developers at Google aren't very good so they've developed a dumbed down language so they can get things done."

• Why Go is not good (HN: 2015, 2014)

  "Go is useful. With that said, Go is not a good language. It's not bad; it's just not good."

• You don't like Google's Go because you are small

  "I view Go as a huge wasted opportunity. How often does a new semi-successful language backed by a successful company appear? Google squandered it through something which looks very much like arrogance."

• Why I don't want to use Go

  "Go is a far better C, with garbage collection. But the GC makes it unacceptable for the only types of problems I'd ever consider using C for."

• Modern garbage collection (HN: 2015)

Deficiencies

• nil handling.
• Code duplication due to lack of generics.

Unsorted Links

• https://golang.org/doc/faq#generics
• https://github.com/golang/go/wiki/GoForCPPProgrammers
• http://frankbraun.org/note/go-libs/
• http://frankbraun.org/note/go-tools/