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Comment by floops | Hacker News Reader

A lot of the comments here seem to be missing something quite important: Scala and Go are not similar languages.

Scala is a large and complex language, encompassing multiple programming idioms. Teams programming Scala (as with C++ and many other "large" languages) often have difficulties nailing down what portion of the language they are going to use. "Java-without-semicolons" all the way through to idiomatic, functional Scala.

Go is a relatively small, simple language. You could easily learn Go's basic syntax and semantics in an afternoon or two. Simplicity and suitability for programmers is an explicit design goal.

Switching away from Scala due to lack of experience while simultaneously picking up Go is not as illogical as everyone seems to be implying.

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This, whilst likely true, is not a self-evident fact.

I think the argument in the blog post is weak because it does not quantify what makes Go more suitable for learning than say, Erlang or Clojure, which are dismissed outright, before moving on to discuss some of the advantages of Go in depth.

You're right, but i think the point you're missing (and i don't mean this in a rude way) is that they had a system built in scala, somehow, but now no one on the team knows scala.

They lack an architectural oversight, that they should really be using one(ish) language rather than a big mix of languages so that this doesn't occur again when no one on the team knows GO because the project leads taken a new job.

Retention. Also, I'd suggest that your average dev will learn Go quick enough to work on this router quicker than they'll learn Scala; I prefer Scala myself, though! It's a balance between proper tech choice, correct management choices moving forward, and dealing with management mistakes (like letting someone build the router in Scala when the rest of the team don't know it) from the past.

A crappy PHP dev will learn Go a hell of a lot quicker than Scala, IMO. A safer choice, for their team and position, IMO.

If Scala and Go were the only two technologies mentioned you would have a point. But this is a monstrous fad bloated lineup of technologies they have there. Integrating this mess is way way more complex than any individual language.

There are good arguments for trying new technologies, but this particular instance seems to be a very good example of how such a strategy can go terribly wrong.

[Edit] On second thought, I might be jumping to conslusions as I don't know anything about how successful they are in actually achieving their goals, doing it on budget or how fun it is to work there. Their actual approach may be less confused than the blog post makes it sound.

"Big is beautiful" versus "small is beautiful". Some people like Ruby, others like Python.

Hell, some people like Perl! :p

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