It's not a criticism, it's literally how the Go language creators themselves describe it. See the Rob Pike quote at http://nomad.so/2015/03/why-gos-design-is-a-disservice-to-in...
I'm responding to criticisms in this and other HN threads about Go, so yes, I'm talking about a criticism.
> it's literally how the Go language creators themselves describe it. See the Rob Pike quote
Unless you think Rob Pike is saying that Google is hiring mediocre programmers (hint: he's not), that statement is intended as a criticism of academics ("researchers"). He's saying that the same things that excite researchers about programming languages don't lend themselves to good software engineering in industry. (And he's right).
But regardless of what the creators of the language may have intended, I'm saying that the criticism regarding experience with functional languages is flat-out wrong. I've written more code in various functional languages than the overwhelming majority of people who read this site - both on and off the clock - and I'm testifying that yes, even for someone who has deep experience with functional language of both the Lisp and the SML families, Go still has a lot to offer that very few others do.
If that was the case, it was a very dubious thought. Before Go was launched, the languages used in Google were Java, Python and C++. None of them look academic, none of them seem to require another language that is specifically designed to "unexcite" newcomers. Neither is functional, really.
Personally I don't think there's such a thing as a 'mediocre' programmer, I think there are programmers who have studied and trained in concepts, techniques and idioms and those who haven't.
It seems pretty clear from that quote that Google is hiring kids fresh out of college, and instead of training and educating them they're throwing them at an intentionally simplified language to get them to churn out code quickly.
Also I find it hard to believe that type-safety guarantees don't lead to good software engineering in industry, when the biggest industrial users of Python, PHP, JavaScript and Clojure--the dynamic language titans of the tech industry--have all recently developed and popularised type systems for them.
And in fact, I also don't see how you can derive a criticism of academia out of those quotes when they mention 'researchers' only in passing, as a point of comparison to talk about their coders' skill level. Too much mental gymnastics for me.
Which is really just talking in circles, because as I've now said in three consecutive comments, I have quite extensive experience with functional programming, and so I'm rejecting the argument that Go is simply for people who don't have that experience.
> And in fact, I also don't see how you can derive a criticism of academia out of those quotes when they mention 'researchers' only in passing, as a point of comparison to talk about their coders' skill level.
It's probably because, in five years of writing the language, I've had the opportunity to hear Pike (and others) talk about the topic. So when I'm responding, I'm drawing on that body of knowledge to inform what I'm saying, rather than limiting myself to a single quotation cited on a blog post written by someone who (by his own admission) is very new to the language.
You may reject it, but the fact remains that that was explicitly one of their design goals when creating Go.
> ... a single quotation cited on a blog post written by someone who (by his own admission) is very new to the language.
A quotation is a quotation; either Rob Pike said those words or he didn't. Who cited the quotation doesn't make a difference.
Actually that's exactly what he's saying - although "inexperienced" is probably a better word than mediocre.
Golang is the modern blub language. It's really great for large companies and big code bases used by many people who want to get quickly up to speed. A decent, even new, programmer can get up to speed and be very productive in Golang in a matter of weeks. I can go and read the Kubernetes code base, which is huge, and know exactly what's going on pretty quickly, despite the complexities in that codebase like code generation and massive concurrency.
A language like Rust on the other hand would take months before someone can be seriously productive in it. That has a very real cost. It's sacrificing short term productivity for the long term benefits.
I think for a big company like Google, with so much staff, many inexperienced, and relatively high turnover (lots of people leaving and going constantly), a language like Golang is perfect.
At a small hedge fund, where you have maybe a dozen or two lifers, investing in a more strategic language like Haskell, Rust, OCaml, etc. starts to become viable.
Because if Golang maintains its current momentum, someday soon the developing world will start pumping out legions of mediocre Golang coders, just as they did with Java.