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Comment by swiftcoder | Hacker News Reader

There's an interesting missing link from the real world here: Javascript -> Go.

Despite the intentions of Go's creators, Go continues to be seen more as a naive alternative to Javascript than a high-level replacement for C++ (at least in the sense of users migrating). I've observed far more Javascript developers excited about Go than I have native C++ developers - who tend to gravitate more towards Rust for it's similar feature set [generics, no need for garbage collector, etc], and it's focus on low-level safety and performance.

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I honestly haven't seen many "groups" move from JS to Go. I've seen individuals do it, but not a ton of "organizations" make that kind of move.

I've seen a LOT more go from Python to Go, and a few go from Java to Go.

Do you have any examples or places that have written about a switch from JS to Go? I'd be super interested in reading their experiences!

My org (15 developers or so) uses Node for everything except one project which requires C++, and we swapped to Go for two major project backends. I wouldn’t say we made the move since it was only one team out of 3 or 4 and nobody has attempted a new backend in Go since then, but anecdotally we have JS devs interested and trying out the prospect.

The only real problems we had little to do without Go itself and more to do with others willingness to try it or learn it. The projects it was used in were quite successful and by comparison have been very stable.

Worked for a big game engine company for brief moment - most of the backend micro services in a single project where previously written in nodejs but all new stuff was written in go. My first and so far last project with go - all I can say it was quite fast to get up and running but echoing the same complaint many have said about go: error handling boilerplate gets annoying fast.

Maybe because the move from JS to Go isn't really from JS but more so from NodeJS, which is a small subset of JS community (largely front-end).

I don't know how big is the NodeJS community is today but I have a hunch it isn't that big anymore. Definitely smaller than the already-declined Rails. This is just anecdote though.

I work in an async python microservices shop and the second language we added was Elixir for anything that needed to be more performant. We're just starting to play around with Go. I haven't touched Elixir yet, so I'll probably go from Python straight to Go as soon as I get the chance.

I would highly recommend trying Elixir out. There's a little bit of a hump to get over at first if you're not familiar with functional programming, but after that it's mostly smooth sailing.

The language has it's own built-in process manager capable of running thousands of concurrent processes with a small footprint.

Things like function arity and pattern matching are core concepts and core parts of how the language works. I've found that when comparing 2 simple web applications, one Python 3 and one elixir, that the Elixir codebase ends up being a bit larger because of the required boilerplate. However, as an application becomes larger, the disparity swings the other way and the Elixir codebase will remain smaller over time.

In addition, writing Elixir code just feels clean. Nothing really feels hacky, even if it is.

I agree. In fact, I'll plug my blog series "Learn with Me: Elixir" where I'm writing about Elixir as I learn it and anyone can learn it along with me. It's the first functional language I've learned, and I'm really enjoying it so far.

https://inquisitivedeveloper.com/tag/lwm-elixir/

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