Comments on: Google’s Go Isn’t Getting Us Anywhere, Part 2

By: Chila

Chila — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 21:37:43 +0000

Unfortunatelly, you’re wrong. Go will gain a lot of Java and C++ (my favorite language) ground. And that’s because it compiles ultra-fast and it produces programs that are a lot faster Java. The language is also made to be totaly portable, and since it compiles so fast, you can just compile the whole app for every new platform you’d like it to run (just like JIT, but better). It will probably also replace JavaScript, since the code can just be downloaded and compiled in seconds, and once it’s compiled it’s like an order of magnitude faster than JS. So there you have, GO will get the whole computing industry somewhere.

By: Jonathan May

Jonathan May — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 11:24:46 +0000

Good article.

I spoke to some Google guys about Go. Apparently it really wasn’t a big deal to anyone inside the company.

That was reassuring.

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 22:32:27 +0000

If anything, that is what Java has proven painfully well.

Java has only proven that these simplifying abstractions got us into trouble when they are given without any understanding of the underlying mechanisms. The information is there for Java too, but clearly no one bothers to look it up before creating a Runnable. Only when they hit serious problems do they start asking the hard questions.

And this isn’t limited to incompetent programmers in my experience…the smart ones gloss over this stuff too because it’s easy enough to do so without thinking about it.

By: fauigerzigerk

fauigerzigerk — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 22:25:00 +0000

I don’t think having more warnings or instructions would make much of a difference. The information is out there, so anyone who wants to learn about concurrent programming can do that. You cannot prevent incompetent programmers from screwing up without massively slowing down competent programmers. If anything, that is what Java has proven painfully well.

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 20:59:22 +0000

Nope, I meant statically-linked, which implies the executable cannot dynamically alter its runtime behavior through the addition of updated/changed code. C++ is statically linked, Java is dynamically linked. The JVM will recognize new JARs and load them at runtime without any interruption in the execution of the program.

What I want from a programming language is a set of tools that are powerful enough to express concurrent execution, but come with a strong enough warning and instruction manual so people don’t continue to create horrific, Heisen-bug nightmares. An abstraction that simplifies at the cost of making it easier to do something stupid is not a valuable abstraction at all.

By: fauigerzigerk

fauigerzigerk — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 20:52:29 +0000

I don’t understand why you are focusing so much on things that a language should make hard. Your primary concern seems to be to help newbies or poor programmers avoid mistakes. That’s not what I want from a programming language.

Do you mean statically typed everywhere you say statically linked?

By: Chance

Chance — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 06:19:08 +0000

i am totally underwhelmed by go. no generics + no inheritance = no reuse. that is an instant deal-breaker.

i guess if google has some tiny niche figured out for go, ok fine, but i was hoping for a lot more. oh well.

By: admin

admin — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 15:33:07 +0000

@Issac: The source link I gave talks in depth about the methodology and there’s a specific quote in there that I think is important: Anything between 2x-4x different is noise, which I take to mean insignificant because of the tests run. That puts a lot of languages on par with C++, IMO. Heckling over smaller numbers is probably not worth the time. Java is 1.7x slower than C++, but Go is closer to 6x. That’s outside the noise barrier for me. But that aside, I don’t think performance is Go’s biggest problem.

@Laurent: I’m not even sure Go is for C++ folks, either. I’ll cover than in another post. Thanks for pointing it out.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 04:58:34 +0000

Maurício, the link you put with your comment shows the comparison between C++ and Java -Xint. I’m sorry but do you know what -Xint means? Do you really use -Xint?

You should look at this instead.
http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u64/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=java&lang2=gpp&box=1

Regards,
Kevin

By: Isaac Gouy

Isaac Gouy — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 03:40:47 +0000

> I added my source link for speed tests of Java vs. C++

Which raises the question of why you think it’s okay to use the benchmarks game for Go vs C++ but not for Java vs C++ ?

http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u64/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=java&lang2=gpp&box=1