No, this has been the case as long as Go has been around, then you look and its some C or C++ developer with specific needs, thats okay, its not for everyone.
I think with C or C++ devs, those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
I would criticize Go from the point of view of more modern languages that have powerful type systems like the ML family, Erlang/Elixir or even the up and coming Gleam. These languages succeed in providing powerful primitives and models for creating good, encapsulating abstractions. ML languages can help one entirely avoid certain errors and understand exactly where a change to code affects other parts of the code — while languages like Erlang provided interesting patterns for handling runtime errors without extensive boilerplate like Go.
It’s a language that hobbles developers under the aegis of “simplicity.” Certainly, there are languages like Python which give too much freedom — and those that are too complex like Rust IMO, but Go is at best a step sideways from such languages. If people have fun or get mileage out of it, that’s fine, but we cannot pretend that it’s really this great tool.
My biggest nitpick against Go was, is and still is the package management. Rust did it so nice and NuGet (C#/.NET) got it so right that Microsoft added it as a built-in thing for Visual Studio, it was originally a plugin and not from Microsoft whatsoever, now they fully own it which is fine, and it just works.
Cargo is amazing, and you can do amazing things with it, I wish Go would invest in this area more.
Also funny you mention Python, a LOT of Go devs are former Python devs, especially in the early days.
> Has Go become the new PHP? Every now and then I see an article complaining about Go's shortcomings.
These sorts of articles have been commonplace even before Go released 1.0 in 2013. In fact, most (if not all) of these complaints could have been written identically back then. The only thing missing from this post that could make me believe it truly was written in 2013 would be a complaint about Go not having generics, which were added a few years ago.
People on HN have been complaining about Go since Go was a weird side-project tucked away at Google that even Google itself didn't care about and didn't bother to dedicate any resources to. Meanwhile, people still keep using it and finding it useful.
The last 20% is also deliberately never done. It's the way they like to run their language. I find it frustrating, but it seems to work for some people.
Go is a pretty good example of how mediocre technology that would never have taken off on its own merits benefits from the rose tinted spectacles that get applied when FAANG starts a project.
I don’t buy this at all. I picked up Go because it has fast compilation speed, produces static binaries, can build useful things without a ton of dependencies, is relatively easy to maintain, and has good tooling baked in. I think this is why it gained adoption vs Dart or whatever other corporate-backed languages I’m forgetting.
Go _excels_ at API glue. Get JSON as string, marshal it to a struct, apply business logic, send JSON to a different API.
Everything for that is built in to the standard library and by default performant up to levels where you really don't need to worry about it before your API glue SaaS is making actual money.
I tried out one project because of these attributes and then scrapped it fairly quickly in favor of rust. Not enough type safety, too much verbosity. Too much fucking "if err != nil".
The language sits in an awkward space between rust and python where one of them would almost always be a better choice.
The other jarring example of this kind of deferring logical thinking to big corps was people defending Apple's soldering of memory and ssd, specially so on this site, until some Chinese lad proved that all the imagined issues for why Apple had to do such and such was bs post hoc rationalisation.
The same goes with Go, but if you spend enough time, every little while you see the disillusionment of some hardcore fans, even from the Go's core team, and they start asking questions but always start with things like "I know this is Go and holy reasons exists and I am doing a sin to question but why X or Y". It is comedy.
No, this has been the case as long as Go has been around, then you look and its some C or C++ developer with specific needs, thats okay, its not for everyone.
I think with C or C++ devs, those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
I would criticize Go from the point of view of more modern languages that have powerful type systems like the ML family, Erlang/Elixir or even the up and coming Gleam. These languages succeed in providing powerful primitives and models for creating good, encapsulating abstractions. ML languages can help one entirely avoid certain errors and understand exactly where a change to code affects other parts of the code — while languages like Erlang provided interesting patterns for handling runtime errors without extensive boilerplate like Go.
It’s a language that hobbles developers under the aegis of “simplicity.” Certainly, there are languages like Python which give too much freedom — and those that are too complex like Rust IMO, but Go is at best a step sideways from such languages. If people have fun or get mileage out of it, that’s fine, but we cannot pretend that it’s really this great tool.
My biggest nitpick against Go was, is and still is the package management. Rust did it so nice and NuGet (C#/.NET) got it so right that Microsoft added it as a built-in thing for Visual Studio, it was originally a plugin and not from Microsoft whatsoever, now they fully own it which is fine, and it just works.
Cargo is amazing, and you can do amazing things with it, I wish Go would invest in this area more.
Also funny you mention Python, a LOT of Go devs are former Python devs, especially in the early days.
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> I would criticize Go from the point of view of more modern languages that have powerful type systems like the ML
Go release date: 2012
ML: 1997
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Go was announced as a replacement for C & C++ so I think it's reasonable to compare it to that.
It was intended as a as a replacement for C & C++ for Google's use case of network services btw.
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It hasn't been promoted that way for over a decade at this point.
On the contrary, PHP at least improves with times and embraces modern pratices in language design.
> Has Go become the new PHP? Every now and then I see an article complaining about Go's shortcomings.
These sorts of articles have been commonplace even before Go released 1.0 in 2013. In fact, most (if not all) of these complaints could have been written identically back then. The only thing missing from this post that could make me believe it truly was written in 2013 would be a complaint about Go not having generics, which were added a few years ago.
People on HN have been complaining about Go since Go was a weird side-project tucked away at Google that even Google itself didn't care about and didn't bother to dedicate any resources to. Meanwhile, people still keep using it and finding it useful.
Go was always 80% there,but the last missing(hard) 20% wasn't ever done.
It is infuriating because it is close to being good, but it will never get there - now due to backwards compatibility.
Also Rob Pike quote about Go's origins is spot on.
The last 20% is also deliberately never done. It's the way they like to run their language. I find it frustrating, but it seems to work for some people.
Go is a pretty good example of how mediocre technology that would never have taken off on its own merits benefits from the rose tinted spectacles that get applied when FAANG starts a project.
I don’t buy this at all. I picked up Go because it has fast compilation speed, produces static binaries, can build useful things without a ton of dependencies, is relatively easy to maintain, and has good tooling baked in. I think this is why it gained adoption vs Dart or whatever other corporate-backed languages I’m forgetting.
80% of what programmers write is API glue.
Go _excels_ at API glue. Get JSON as string, marshal it to a struct, apply business logic, send JSON to a different API.
Everything for that is built in to the standard library and by default performant up to levels where you really don't need to worry about it before your API glue SaaS is making actual money.
I tried out one project because of these attributes and then scrapped it fairly quickly in favor of rust. Not enough type safety, too much verbosity. Too much fucking "if err != nil".
The language sits in an awkward space between rust and python where one of them would almost always be a better choice.
But, google rose colored specs...
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Exactly.
The other jarring example of this kind of deferring logical thinking to big corps was people defending Apple's soldering of memory and ssd, specially so on this site, until some Chinese lad proved that all the imagined issues for why Apple had to do such and such was bs post hoc rationalisation.
The same goes with Go, but if you spend enough time, every little while you see the disillusionment of some hardcore fans, even from the Go's core team, and they start asking questions but always start with things like "I know this is Go and holy reasons exists and I am doing a sin to question but why X or Y". It is comedy.
It means many people are using it. That's it.