Re:Python Is Easy. Go Is Simple. Simple != Easy
by klodolph on Monday November 27, 2023 @01:01PM
(#38435681)
I can understand why you felt the need to share that, but if you only used it for about a day, aren’t you just reporting your initial impressions? If I used Rust for about a day, I would probably complain about the borrow checker. And if I used Python for about a day, I would have no idea what people are talking about when they complain about package management in Python.
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Re:Python Is Easy. Go Is Simple. Simple != Easy
by tikhonj on Monday November 27, 2023 @01:47PM
(#38436406)
That's true, but the flip side is selecting heavily for public commentary from people who are already invested in—or at least generally open to—the tool in question. But, of course, that means selecting heavily against the people who see immediate, significant problems!
I've run into this problem repeatedly on Goodreads where wholly mediocre works get high ratings because of aggressive selection bias. I generally like fantasy, but I've stumbled on some painful stinkers thanks to this dynamic.
It's doubly reasonable to value first opinions on languages like Go since they intentionally aren't doing anything fundamentally novel. With a handful of exceptions, Go is a remix of ideas from mainstream languages that we've all seen before. It is about as far from a new paradigm for programming as you can get, and that's the point! Hell, that's the main thing people praise about the language: "I could pick Go up immediately, without needing to learn anything new"...
Re:Python Is Easy. Go Is Simple. Simple != Easy
by madeofpalk on Monday November 27, 2023 @01:22PM
(#38436009)
It's immediately clear (to me at least) what benefits you get from the 'pain' of borrow checking. I'm not sure what benefits you get from null pointer exceptions.
Re:Python Is Easy. Go Is Simple. Simple != Easy
by pydry on Monday November 27, 2023 @01:37PM
(#38436246)
It's pretty clear what the payoff is for the investment in using a borrow checker, and it's quite big. Less so for writing if err != nil on every. other. line. That's just an unnecessary nuisance.
Re:Python Is Easy. Go Is Simple. Simple != Easy
by gwd on Monday November 27, 2023 @03:08PM
(#38437515)
The payoff is the same: you do more work up front, but have fewer weird, hard-to-track-down bugs later. Even rust's "?" operator nudges you towards "just pass the error on up", rather than actually thinking about what you want to do if an error happens each time.