A large percentage of the code I've written the last 10 years is Go. I think it does somewhat better than the others in some areas, such as relative simplicity and having a robust stdlib, but a lot of this is false security. The simplicity is surface level. The runtime and GC are very complex. And the stdlib being robust means that if you ever have to implement a compiler from scratch, you have to implement all of std.
All in all I think the end result will be the same. I don't think any of my Go code will survive long term.
8 years is not that long, if it can still compile in say 20 years then sure but 8 years in this industry isn't that long at all (unless you're into self flagellation by working on the web).
It depends on your threat model. Mine includes the compiler vendors abandoning the project and me needing to make my own implementation. Obviously unlikely, and someone else would likely step in for all the major languages, but I'm not convinced Go adds enough over C to give away that control.
As long as I have a stack of esp32s and a working C compiler, no one can take away my ability to make useful programs, including maintaining the compiler itself.
A large percentage of the code I've written the last 10 years is Go. I think it does somewhat better than the others in some areas, such as relative simplicity and having a robust stdlib, but a lot of this is false security. The simplicity is surface level. The runtime and GC are very complex. And the stdlib being robust means that if you ever have to implement a compiler from scratch, you have to implement all of std.
All in all I think the end result will be the same. I don't think any of my Go code will survive long term.
I’ve got 8 year old Go code that still compiles fine on the latest Go compiler.
Go has its warts but backwards compatibility isn’t one of them. The language is almost as durable as Perl.
8 years is not that long, if it can still compile in say 20 years then sure but 8 years in this industry isn't that long at all (unless you're into self flagellation by working on the web).
5 replies →
It depends on your threat model. Mine includes the compiler vendors abandoning the project and me needing to make my own implementation. Obviously unlikely, and someone else would likely step in for all the major languages, but I'm not convinced Go adds enough over C to give away that control.
As long as I have a stack of esp32s and a working C compiler, no one can take away my ability to make useful programs, including maintaining the compiler itself.
2 replies →