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Comment by rochak | Hacker News Reader

Go made a great decision to namespace packages via this Github style.

And the horrible decision to not make library-level ("module") and code-unit-level ("package") namespacing orthogonal. The former was an afterthought tacked on since the package system was designed to be used only within Google's monorepo and little care was paid to how it would work when it was released to the public and used more generally.

I want to understand what you just said, but I fear watering your language down a bit might be a tall ask with some people. Would you be willing to eli5 what you believe Go did that was a horrible decision with regards to module/package namespacing?

I think what they mean is: if you see a line like `import git.example.com/foo/bar/baz`, that could be package `baz` inside module `git.example.com/foo/bar`, or it could be package `bar/baz` inside module `git.example.com/foo`.

Also, even if you know it's the latter, package namespacing isn't strictly related to directory structure, so `bar/baz` has no specific meaning outside of the context of a go import. They could have used any other separator for package components - `git.example.com/foo:bar:baz` - but instead they chose the slash, making the scheme both technically ambiguous and easy to confuse for an HTTP URL.

Ah that makes sense. I think Go did somewhat stumble a bit in the early days due to this, especially with repositories in GitLab, where GitLab allows essentially a directory tree where your repository can be nested indefinitely in directories like `https://gitlab.com/mygroup/subgroup1/subgroup2/repository`.

I still don't think this is a huge issue, to be honest. Not one big enough for me to complain about, for sure. But it's definitely not ideal.

I think he wants them to be treated differently for some reason.

Go packages is yet another design item that I dislike on the language, exposing SCM URLs directly on the source code, and no story for binary caching.

> exposing SCM URLs directly on the source code

Incorrect. You're able to use any URL you control, regardless of where your SCM is located.

Thanks for pointing out you didn't got what the whole point of the wrong design is about.

Thanks for confirming you'd rather be a hater than someone with justified opinions.

I am quite open about my opinion regarding most of Go's design decisions.

How is this a good decision? You have to alias packages when names collide

What is the better decision to avoid name colliding?

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