Go language turns two, but its syntax turns forty

The syntax may be a mixed bag. Some old and new stuff. The problem is that they didn't try harder and instead preferred explicit code too much in my opinion. I still like Go, but its main selling point in my opinion is that programs written in it start fast enough. Maybe a second important feature is that deployment is helped by statically linked programs, where one .exe is all you need.

That sends me back to the Delphi days and I'm not too happy either. Because Delphi provided those kinds of features and we ended up losing it in favor of Java and .NET craziness.

The thing is, Go web apps start faster in the App Engine than web apps made with some of the other languages and also may take up fewer resources. That means that App Engine applications can be scaled up and down because spinning up new processes (with Go apps) is instant.

Here's an example:

    $ cat hn.go && 8g hn.go && 8l -o hn hn.8 && time ./hn
    package main

    import "fmt"

    func main(){
      fmt.Println("Hello HN!");
    }
    Hello HN!

    real	0m0.002s
    user	0m0.000s
    sys	0m0.000s

Cheers.

The syntax of Visual Basic is that of Basic that is even older (1964) than that of C (1972) that inspired Go. Simpler syntax has been used since. Python is an example.