Comment by grey-area | Hacker News Reader

Comment by grey-area | Hacker News Reader

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There are plenty of companies who have spent millions on developing their websites, written in a variety of the languages you list as 'toy' languages, or even PHP. Whether they would have been better to use other languages is impossible to say of course, but these languages are being used for significant projects. The use of the pejorative 'toy' is not very useful, and likely to evoke emotional reactions.

Go was inspired by a talk on the features of C++11 [1] - in despair at the addition of yet more features; the origins of the language and the philosophy behind it might make interesting reading if you use C++, because it was done directly in reaction to the (as they saw it) baroque edifice of C++.

Though I agree that people should not judge languages by popularity, novelty, or coolness (though it seems many people do), that doesn't mean you shouldn't be open to looking at new languages, if only to inform how you use your favourite one. Go for example has been inspired by the languages you deride, or their precursors (Python, Ruby etc), and in fact has taken much from them in syntax and in the popularity of closures etc.

I do agree with your other point though that this is an excellent area for Google to focus on, and something which will benefit a lot of domains which currently don't use scripting languages (systems programming, many large server systems, desktop apps, mobile apps).

[1] http://commandcenter.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/less-is-exponent...

I'm aware of what and why Go came to be, and I can easily relate to the reasons(I've read the blog post). I am by no means saying C or C++ as languages are perfect, nothing is. However, as I mentioned in my another reply to sanderdj, there's huge investment in effort for the abstractions the two languages build. It's very hard to tackle the problem of existing codebase for example, as that requires building stuff from ground up(that happens later on), or the fact that there are far more competent C or C++ programmers than there are Go or Rust programmers(and this isn't likely to change for the next 10-15 years or so, I'd bet), or the fact that there exists practically no libraries for these languages(ports are relatively fast though, few years max.), portability is a major concern too, tools too as well as language standard and educational resources(books, uni grade education, best practices over years, ...) won't exist for years...

So while I think that C and C++ will phase out eventually even in the domain of systems programming, I really don't see Go or Rust doing that for the foreseeable future, if ever. It would be really great to build trustworthy(non-leaky, efficient and secure) abstractions on top of languages like Rust and Go, but how reliable would it be? When would it be feasible? Who takes the first steps? When will the mainstream follow? Are these languages going to be relevant after 20 years?

Oh, and I'm not deriding other languages in their specific domains(I'm a Ruby fan, not so much into Python), but rather the fact that I've been under the impression that many people think that soon C and C++ will phase out and become obsolete(or that they have already done so), we go higher in abstractions, Python and Haskell are the future and computers are so fast that nobody has to care about optimizing their code. Then reality and post-PC era strikes back, battery life and software power-efficiency play higher role than ever...

My experience with Go and especially Rust is quite limited, but it would be really great if I could do my stuff(right now games and path tracing rendering, render times from 12 hours upwards) in either them instead of C++. I really like the ideas behind the languages and they fit my core domain just as well as C and C++ do. Though the thing is, there are no tools. No libraries. No books. Nothing. There's simply no way to jump over, even if the possible performance penalty would be tolerable. And this isn't likely to be changing much for the better for upcoming years, if even then. Perhaps when the languages get an actual standard... It's sad in a way even, but can't escape the facts which make them not viable for many domains.

Thanks for the cogent response, not sure why I was modded down, but never mind. I've been doing a few small experiments in Go just to see what it's like and have loved the compilation time, lack of cruft like header files, and the simplicity. The standard library for Go reminds me of Ruby in many ways as it mostly works exactly as you'd expect with few surprises, and it covers a surprisingly broad range.

I agree that hyperbole on the future of computing is overblown (I wonder if Rust now feels it has to compete with Go for hype!), but there are a lot of things in say Go which are not as nice in C, unicode strings, loops, slices, etc. So it's not entirely pointless to start again with all we have learned since 1969. All of the little niggles in C can be worked around, but overall Go feels like a cleaned up version of C which took a few ideas from C++ and other OOP languages and left the rest out as unnecessary. Given the problems vast hierarchies of classes sometimes cause, and the huge and growing complexity of C++, I can sympathise with that point of view.

To say that there are no tools or libraries is exaggerating slightly, there are tools for Go (see http://golang.org/pkg/), and books, just not as many, which is quite normal for a young language which has just hit 1.0. For Rust there will be far fewer as it is even less developed, but that's to be expected. As you say if Go or Rust ever do become popular it will be over decades, not within a year or two.

> No books. Nothing.

No books?

Go in Action; Evan Shaw; Manning; http://www.manning.com/shaw/

An Introduction to Programming in Go; Caleb Doxsey; http://www.golang-book.com

Network Programming with Go; Jan Newmarch; Free e-book; http://jan.newmarch.name/golang/

Programming in Go: Creating Applications for the 21st Century; Mark Summerfield; Addison-Wesley Professional; http://qtrac.eu/gobook.html

The Way To Go: A Thorough Introduction To The Go Programming Language; Ivo Balbaert; iUniverse

The Go Programming Language Phrasebook; David Chisnall; Addison-Wesley Professional

The Go Programming Language (upcoming); Brian Ketelsen; The Pragmatic Bookshelf; http://pragprog.com/book/bkgo/the-go-programming-language

Learning Go; Miek Gieben; Free e-book; http://www.miek.nl/projects/learninggo/index.html

Systemprogrammierung in Google Go: Grundlagen, Skalierbarkeit, Performanz, Sicherheit; Frank Müller; Dpunkt Verlag; http://dpunkt.de/buecher/3449.html

Programmierung in Google Go: Einstieg, Beispiele und professionelle Anwendung; Rainer Feike, Steffen Blass; Addison-Wesley

Remove the books that are mostly too general introductions for novice programmers (the syntax etc). Remove the poorly edited, self published free ebooks. Remove the german language books.

Now divide by the number of C++ books published in the last decade.

You got something like 0.05?

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