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Comment by siteshwar | Hacker News Reader

> Rust is developed by a community, and was started by Mozilla. Go development seems to be de facto controlled by Google, who originated the language. I'd rather bet my non-work future on a language that isn't controlled by a huge corporation, especially one of the main players in today's surveillance economy.

Anyone else agree with this view ? Programming languages should be choosen based on technical merits, rather than who is behind it. Is there a lesson from history that I am missing ?

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"Programming languages should be choosen based on technical merits, rather than who is behind it."

Considering the motivations of the language owner is a valid concern. Many people, for example, jumped on to HHVM as a "faster PHP". Then it started branching away from PHP[1]. Predictable, if you considered Facebook's reasons for having it.

[1] https://hhvm.com/blog/2018/09/12/end-of-php-support-future-o...

What were Facebook’s reasons?

I don’t know anything about HHVM, but plausibly the goal of it is “help Facebook” rather than “be a faster PHP,” and people who came for a faster PHP and are not Facebook are let down by it.

Non-optional strong types is one example where it benefits Facebook, but likely isn't great for those hoping for a "faster PHP". The blog post makes it sound like HHVM will only support hack, and not PHP, sometime in the near future.

In all three cases, Python, Go and Rust, the language and ecosystem may be in the hands of an organization, but you can probably produce code productively in it for years even if the organization went under or chose unacceptable paths.

Go is quite unique in that it produces very independent binaries. This might make software written in it quite future-proof.

Personally I like Python's philosophy and the way the community is run. I like the trajectory. I understand the trade-offs. And I am sure as hell not going to teach Go or Rust as a first programming language to people who aren't computer science students. And even then...

>Go is quite unique in that it produces very independent binaries. This might make software written in it quite future-proof.

What do you mean by "it produces very independent binaries."? Do you mean that Go implements system calls itself, instead using corresponding wrappers from the OS's underlying C library?

I read something like that recently, but haven't looked into the point yet.

"Very independent" doesn't mean totally independent. In particular Go doesn't do shared libraries.

Cool, thanks.

I think a “rust with GC” could actually be a very good intro language. The borrow checker is more than beginners can handle though.

There is little point to introduce a GC in Rust. If you don't mind a GC, you have nicer languages out there.

From my perspective, of all the languages that I’ve tried (Java, C, C++, Javascript, Haskell, OCAML, Python, several lisps), PHP, Swift), Rust is the best even without the borrow checker, and the borrow checker is just a nice bonus. Admittedly, there are many languages that I haven’t tried, and I haven’t done significant work with all of those.

>Anyone else agree with this view ? Programming languages should be choosen based on technical merits, rather than who is behind it.

Absolutely not. Technical merits are only part of the considerations.

Big companies, for example, where the stakes are higher, never chose languages on their technical merits alone. The also look at the owner/stewardship of the language, and in many case, roll their own languages, to avoid being at their mercy.

I'd say, all things being equal, yes, choose languages on tech merit or suitability to task. But look at what's happening with Java and Oracle's handling of it. I think the Google vs Oracle lawsuit is still going through appeal. Ask Google if they wish in hindsight they'd built Android on something else.

Not saying you’re wrong, but Google re-implemented Java for Android, which is quite different from using Java alone.

So it’s not a completely fair comparison.

Of course the reimplementation is what got them into this lawsuit...

I think it's more accurate to say that not paying Oracle is what got them in court. Either way it shows that the steward of a language can be important.

> But look at what's happening with Java and Oracle's handling of it.

It got fully open sourced?

I think it’s a very important aspect of the language’s ecosystem health, as the steward has a big impact on it.

This can be both a blessing or a curse. Google seems to be on the good side, but I’ve seen plenty of languages which are frustrated by its steward.

The original author comes close to contradicting themselves - Python too is developed by a community, but one of the reasons for moving away is that they are "not getting the feeling that the Python community is going in a direction I want to follow". That can happen to communities just as well as it can to corporations.

There's a simple remedy to the problem of becoming dependent on a single entity wrt the programming language you choose: use only languages with "official" specs (by ISO/IEC or another respected org) and multiple implementations. That's C, C++, ECMAScript, shell, and a couple niche languages such as Ada, Fortran, and Prolog.

I believe Java also fits that list. The [Java Language Specification](https://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jls/se12/html/index.htm...) via the [Java Virtual Machine Specification](https://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jvms/se12/html/index.ht...) is implemented on the open-source OpenJDK project and many other free distributions exist, including from Amazon, Azul, IBM, Alibaba and others [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Java_virtual_machines#...

Java is a bit special in this regard because of the Java TCK which has caused issues for e.g. Apache Harmony.

One should evaluate all relevant characteristics, both technical and non-technical.

Oracle and Java

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