Go version 1 proposal | Hacker News Reader

Go version 1 proposal

docs.google.com

100 pointsroxtar23 comments

The future's looking bright for Go.

I've recently been looking at some new languages: Scala, Haskell, Clojure, Node.js etc. Go was the only site to put code samples (live ones at that) on their front page.

Language/framework creators take note: The first thing I want to see on your site is what the code looks like. How to install it is a distant second (I can look it up once you've convinced me it's worth installing)

I have never ever understood the desire to make installation details and lists of requirements the first thing I see on software docs. I come across all these tiny packages or full-blown applications and I have to literally spend minutes to figure out what they actually do.

Being open source is not a real advantage any more, but it takes so little effort to summarize your project at the top of the README, so please do it so I can fall in love with your stuff.

I've noticed that this problem exists even beyond software documentation. It's often hard to figure out what a company does by looking at their web site, for instance. I wish every such document started with "Product Foo is ____. It does ____."

I think that comes from the desire to find out if it's even worth exploring the project on a given hardware/software setup.

It may be a throwback, but it's still a good idea.

http://nodejs.org/ has a code sample.

You're right, I'd forgotten that one

very happy to hear about the "go" command on the timeline. While I haven't really had much trouble building Makefile this has seemed one of the least elegant parts of development with Go

Checkout the usage for ./go so-far here: http://code.google.com/p/go/source/browse/src/cmd/go/script....

Makefile fussing was driving me insane with Go. I was trying to build with directory local packages to keep bits of code separated cleanly and it was a pain to get working.

I discovered http://code.google.com/p/go-gb/ and haven't looked back. It makes building Go code SO much nicer. If I just want to try something quick in Go I just make a directory, place my whatever.go file in it, type 'gb', and run my program.

I really hope they make this 'go' tool as easy as 'gb'.

Go 1 is a good idea. I just hope Go 2 is not considered harmful.

oh, my. If Google doesn't capitalize on that when Go 2.x DOES hit the streets, I'll be very disappointed.

Well played.

groan

"The Go 1 release will be available in source and binary form for at least these platforms: ... Windows (2000 + later): amd64, 386"

I develop primarily on a Windows machine, so this is some good news.

Recent releases are already available for Windows, see http://code.google.com/p/gomingw/

I have only skimmed the page, but this caught my eye:

    Close is intended as a way for a sender to signal
    that no more values will be sent.  

    Go 1 will disallow close on receive-only channels.

Why, then, would one still call this 'close'? Wouldn't "done", "dontexpectmore" or "sendEndOfData" be better names?

Yesterday in #go-nuts we were discussing better names for close() which currently causes so much confusion, my suggestion was end(), but done() is a good one too.

It's currently quite a pain to get the most-recent Go release installed, and integrated into your development environment. I'd like to see Go v1 be more distribution-friendly. This is the biggest show-stopper for wider Go adoption.

I'd also like to see a built-in IDE analogous to Python's IDLE to lower the barrier-to-entry. IDLE is great for education.

I also think that Go needs to establish some sort of independent entity for the future development of the language. People need assurance that Go isn't going to go away if Google gets bored with it. Go hasn't crossed that rubicon yet, and this is another big barrier to adoption.

I'm one of the authors of Goclipse. A Go IDE plugin for Eclipse which can be found here: http://code.google.com/p/goclipse/

I am always interested in getting people's opinions... and help. Most of the people who use Go however, including me sometimes, seem to use more lightweight text editors like vi.

There are Go packages for Debian and Ubuntu at least ( http://go-lang.cat-v.org/packages ) plus a binary distribution for Windows, and installing in other systems is quite trivial:

  $ hg clone -u release https://go.googlecode.com/hg/ go
  $ cd go/src
  $ ./all.bash

Last I checked a few months ago, if you want to use a distribution's version of Go, you must install all later libraries as root - there's no place for "my local libraries".

That sounds like a problem with the packaging for your distribution.

If you install Go the way golang.org instructions indicate, you can install everything as a non-root user just fine.

Submitted yesterday: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3080027

I certainly missed it in the wall of Steve that was HN yesterday. ;)

twice, in fact: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3080011

seems like they both got lost.

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