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points by johnfn 3 days ago | 0 comments
It's incredibly easy for new engineers to pick up. On the spectrum between "features easy for beginners but nightmarish for experienced engineers" and "features complex for beginners but great for experienced engineers" it always makes the tradeoff for the former.
[–] dude250711 3 days ago
Yes, just like Go, it's a junior developer onboarding language, that somehow managed to overstay its welcome.
[–] theplumber 3 days ago
Go is awesome and has great ecosystem. I think if you want to just deliver Go is one of the best language out there. Of course as long as the project makes sense(I.e no client side/GUI stuff, there it gets messy)
[–] konart 3 days ago
Some people live to shit on Go since you can't really do "crazy cool shit" as someone I knew put it.

Apparently you can't be a senior dev unless you "just here to deliver"

[–] dijit 3 days ago
C++ is the "just here to deliver" language.

It can do everything, it's a nightmare to write correctly and is so full of warts that really only a mother could love it.

Go is "elegant" and properly designed, which leads to fundamental unassailable limitations; like its GUI story or writing a backend for other languages (cgo is so slow and -build-mode=c-shared is a hog).

No operator overloading makes it difficult for numerical/scientific work - Python is stronger here.

"just get stuff done" is your crappy dump truck which is welded together out of spare bits and is barely hanging on, this is how I feel about C++.

Go is a lot more elegant and well designed, but it requires "smooth roads" (An OS and Runtime) and goes fast... it's more like a Dodge Hellcat..

EDIT: if we consider speed a function of development time rather than runtime, of course at runtime C++ can be as fast as it gets.

[–] stackghost 3 days ago
The dump truck that is C++ definitely goes just as fast if not faster than that Hellcat, though.

To me it seems more like C++ is the metal shop's old school 3-axis mill: effective and dangerous. Can do almost anything, including easily maim you unless you're continually vigilant.

Go seems like a CNC machine: just as effective, much less dangerous because it relies on digital safeguards and embedded controllers. You need to go to extreme lengths to make it do something it wasn't designed to do.

Python seems like lego. Shit simple to build things with, lets you start building immediately, fantastic for prototypes, but finished product is still just press-fit plastic bricks

[–] dijit 3 days ago
Well, if we consider speed of development rather than speed of the runtime, the analogy holds better.
[–] bheadmaster 3 days ago
If Go is a junior developer onboarding language, then I proclaim myself a perpetual onboarding junior.
[–] dijit 3 days ago
And that's ok.
[–] dizhn 3 days ago
It's no wonder then that Google used to be all in on Python in the 2000s as a language for juniors and then invented another language with similar users in mind. With AI becoming what it is they probably did not need to do the latter.

Python owes a lot to that initialish Google push where for a few years you couldn't get a job at google without knowing python or you could easily get a job if you knew python. Maybe both.