I love Go, but there is a strong case that Kubernetes has a messy codebase because Go didn’t have good dependency management or generics when they started it. The strength of the ecosystem in other areas let them get started and now they have the tragedy of success, a la Wordpress.

Part of the issues with Kubernetes is that it started as a Java project and then it became a Go project. If anyone started a large Go project with that mindset it would look messy no matter what you did.

Can you point to any large Go project that isn’t a mess?

I agree that from a single sample you can’t reach conclusions, but “it was their fault” isn’t a great defense.

Is rclone a mess? I don't do Go, but some glances at it don't scream "mess". https://github.com/rclone/rclone

Can YOU point to any large project that isn’t a mess?

Isn’t mess relative to the beholder of the eye.

Many large projects may look like a mess but their success is because they got the high level architecture right and perhaps had the moat of a large tech behemoth behind them.

VSCode, Tensorflow, Kubernetes, Go, Typescript, React. These are a few that come to mind.

At a high level, they are all fantastic projects and perhaps messy in their own way, but they are absolutely fantastic, hardened proven codebases with ~millions of users.

Servo

Ahh with 3250 open issues and 8k closed ones? With the main-driver being Mozilla?

There is one video about the Kuberentes code base: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VNDjwzzKPo and it has nothing to do with Go language iteself, it's about organizing the repo and code strucutre.

Kubernetes is a complex distributed system with over 2M loc, not matter what the language you use there going to be some issues.

It's probably one of the largest open source project out there.

2MLOC is too big for what it’s supposed to be doing. That’s a sign that something went wrong. I wouldn’t blame Go qua language per se, but the lack of generics and lack of dependency management (when they started) couldn’t have helped.

Yeah lets just use Docker Swarm or Nomad. Or which features would you remove to make it less bloated?

The argument - as I understood it knowing only little about Go and Kubernetes - wasn't about bloat in application features, but bloat caused by the language. The stated argument was "missing generics" - missing generics means that similar algorithms have to be re-created multiple times instead of being reused. Thus comparing this tonnaother language might be interesting.

For example C++ is extremely powerful in writing generic code: Make it a template and and provide a set of of traits to modify the behavior and you get a set of algorithms you can re-use for anything – at the cost of unreadable code in the impelemntation (if you aren't careful; with a chance of quite precise code on the call side) and of course with the bloated version in the resulting binary (after compiler instantiated and inlined (thus copied) everything; where the programmer typically doesn't have to care (till the binary is too large to handle) all of it)

So the better question ist ... What code got duplicated exactly and if the one mentioning can't give examples which make a dent in 2MLOC then it is not due to the language in the first place.

I assumed it is about features because there are really a lot of features inside Kubernetes which are not available in Swarm or Nomad by default.

2 MLOC is insane. I assume some of that might be test code and other infrastructure, and it's basically impossible to compare apples to apples in terms of code size. But for reference, 2 MLOC is around the same code size as PostgreSQL, which is also a complex distributed system, has arguably a lot more user-exposed features and a long history, and is written in C of all things.

Kubernetes is exception, not the norm.

Because of no overloading and generics, you are often forced to repeat code or resort to unsafe runtime practices.

Everyone is posting some stuff about the kubernetes codebase, but:

https://fasterthanli.me/articles/i-want-off-mr-golangs-wild-...

The monotonic time thing is an especially good example.