undefined | Better HN

0 pointsmeddlepal7y ago0 comments

Picked up some Go. Still cannot for the life of me figure out why it's so popular (please don't reply with statically linked binaries)[1]. In the infrastructure and ops space it seems to be slowly eating Python (sadness). When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

[1] Such a benefit doesn't matter in a containerized world.

0 comments

3 comments · 2 top-level

bdibs7y ago· 1 in thread

Performance wise Go is worlds ahead of Python.

meddlepalOP7y ago

Sure, no strong disagreement there, but it doesn't matter for most operational and infrastructure tooling where the language and ecosystem really seems to have taken off. Hell it barely matters for most web services or apps once you factor in database or other IO latency.

It does have a nifty concurrency system.

I do like that most Go code is idiomatic because the language really kind of restricts you to writing it a certain way.

I wish it had a less verbose way of dealing with errors... some kind of function composition along with better formalization of Go's multi-return (e.g. Try, Either types) would be nice... of course without generics that is likely tricky.

I'm happy I can read and write it, but for my personal work I'll be sticking with some mix of Python and Java/Kotlin.

I think in 2019 I'm going to really give Rust a shot.

1 more reply

sevagh7y ago

>[1] Such a benefit doesn't matter in a containerized world.

Go is used for the tooling for deploying this containerized world.

Let's take a look at some infra/ops tools written in Go:

* Docker itself - should run on baremetal (duh)

* Nomad, a container scheduler - should run on baremetal

* Kubernetes, a container scheduler - should run on baremetal

* Consul, service discovery - should run on baremetal

* Etcd, service discovery - should run on baremetal

When you actually work in ops, setting up the container conveyer belt by putting Go static binaries on Linux hosts - so that developers can go ahead, containerized their applications, and deploy them - is a big improvement over the Python days of yore.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse