“Go’s design is a disservice to intelligent programmers”

Man, I've lately seen so many posts criticizing Go. They must have done something pretty well with it. It's sad that I see more posts criticizing Go than posts talking positively about it.

Sort of like my feeling about politics - if the far left and far right hate you, you're probably on the right track.

To be fair, it feels like survivor's bias. People are more vocal about criticism. When you agree, well, what is there to say? Nothing, you just use it, instead.

In that light, the actual usage statistics are probably a better metric of the language's success than the +/- ratio on hacker news.

Knowing its history, if you're really hated by the far left, you're probably part of it too :D

I hear you and I have been a fan of Go for awhile. But, it hasn't really done anything new, especially in regards to programming language theory over the last 30 odd years. It feels like another "developers, developers, developers" play and when you see ultra modern languages like Rust, you sort of get the feeling Go is half baked and without purpose.

I completely understand most people's complains about Go. I think most programmers that have used Go understand that it doesn't offer anything new, besides very easy concurrency and a few other things. Still, I think it has a place, and it seems a few large companies are using it with success, and, at the end of the day, if people find it practical, then way to go.

Its purpose is to help ship products. It isn't sexy, it isn't fancy, it isn't interesting, it isn't groundbreaking. If it doesn't help you ship products, don't use it.

Go will continue to grow at the insane pace it has because it hit a sweet spot and cared about standard library and documentation. You will continue to see high profile successes because it doesn't try to be fancy, it tries to get out of your way so you can do that job of actually transforming data. So you can be a programmer and it can be a language, not a hobby.

I am a language geek, I write DSLs on a regular basis for fun -- and I love any language that is DSL friendly -- but for actually getting my day to day "must ship", "must work", "must scale" work done -- Go to the rescue. Great docs, easy to train people on, ultra-simple spec, multiple compilers, easy enough to integrate C code, and a really great vibrant community.