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Comment by a3n | Hacker News Reader

Go is looking more attractive, but the language is not just the language.

When Go has available a significant fraction (subjectively) of the "batteries included" that Python has, then I'll start investing time in Go. Is it there yet (subjectively)?

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It's definitely getting there. I'd actually say that Go's network "batteries" are just about as comprehensive and possibly easier to use than Python's (ie, socket, urllib, urllib2, httplib, smtplib, pop3lib, etc.).

It's also pretty cool that Go has a full crypto library in written in Go.

I was seriously looking at Go for a desktop app using the promising new go-qml, but there seems to be no elegant way to use Qt's system tray feature with go-qml. I'd say Go still has a way to go before it's got as many possibilities as Python for desktop GUI development.

But for command line utilities and network apps, I'll definitely reach for Go over Python now (although I'm increasingly playing around with Rust and hoping I can eventually just use Rust for just about everything).

Edit: Removed imaplib since Go has no equivalent in its stdlib.

I think Go is pretty competitive with Python's standard library. It doesn't have an FTP client (we use and are happy with github.com/jlaffaye/ftp) or an equivalent to imaplib (although github.com/mxk/go-imap/imap looks interesting), but for the rest of our workload Go has everything we need.

Aside: for SFTP we use (and like) https://github.com/minusnine/gosftp/

It depends on what batteries you want.

The Go standard library is pretty amazing as far as standard libraries go (I'd say it's more useful than python's, and definitely contains less cruft). Community provided libraries are expanding rapidly, but there is a strong focus on web services all around.

The standard library is actually quite good: http://golang.org/pkg/

Thanks to all replies. It looks like for work I could use it for personal automation/productivity, but it would be harder to convince others in the department to use anything I might write that depends on newish/non-established third party libs. I work for BigCo. I'm using xlrd, for example, in a few python scripts, and even that's going to raise an eyebrow or two.

As for home, I'm playing around with imap and some related things at the moment, and pointers to 3rd party libs might be fun for me to try. We'll see.

Their asinine policy against package managers (yes, let's go BACKWARD. Everything was better in the good 'ol days!) is keeping me away from it. I don't have time to deal with more self-aggrandizing douche bags.

For a start, Go's SSL/TLS doesn't disable certificate checking by default ;-). Does that mean it's more "batteries included" than Python for TLS and every TLS-using protocol?

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