alt Hacker NewsI'd argue Go is not on a "Pareto frontier" and that no matter how you value the various attributes of programming languages, a fair assessment will never select Go.
A simple example is: if you highly value language popularity; Go is not most popular. If you highly value a type system that catches errors; Go's type system catches fewer errors than others. Etc. There is no weighted sum of attributes that will select Go--that's my argument.
Replies
Go is relatively easy to learn, and the semantics of the language make it more difficult to write "clever" code that's difficult to understand.
That's the main selling point, with a secondary point that it statically compiles so you don't have to do a whole Python/JS distribution thing for CLIs.
Java feels like the closest contender here, although it really sucks for CLIs due to start up times. I don't think it's the easiest to learn either, but I've never tried all that hard.
It only really makes sense to me at org-scale, though. I think you raise a very good point for individual projects, I too normally don't choose Go for that (unless I need compilation to make distribution to myself easier on corporate laptops).
Something doesn’t need to be the best at anything to be on a Pareto frontier. And (usually) no one chooses on a single dimension; they choose a point in many that maximizes distance from zero, scaled by their preferences, if you are thinking of it like a frontier.
Is there a language that you would argue is at least as good as Go at everything and better than Go in at least one thing? That would be the most straightforward way to argue against its Pareto optimality.
Listing particular sets of preferences for which Go is not optimal is not sufficient unless you can show the list to be exhaustive.
Simple toolchain which supports trivial lightweight deployment is my go to attribute to select Go in projects.
> if you highly value language popularity; Go is not most popular
Go is similar to popular languages like C, JS/TS, & Python. And so, easy to get started.
> highly value a type system that catches errors
Probably these folks already use even less popular ML-style languages like OCaml & Haskell; or (comparatively) obscure ones like Agda, Idris, & rocq/Coq.
Here's how my assessment selected Go (long before LLMs):
- I had to write a moderately complex program. I didn't want to do it in C, and I didn't want to learn Rust.
- So I spent roughly about 2 hours becoming familiar with Go and playing around in Go playground. I decided that this would work.
- And then I got started on my program and I was immediately productive and that software is still running today, along with all the other stuff I've written since then.
Programmer productivity is excellent with Go. And it has a thriving ecosystem. Of course, some things could be better, but I don't really have much issue with it's error handling or types.