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Comment by steveklabnik | Hacker News Reader

> the Rust crew has decided that they need to aggressively attack Go

FWIW, most Rust people don't even see Rust and Go as competing, but everyone keeps comparing the two, and at some point, repeating a falsehood enough time makes it truth.

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Yeah I can see them competing on the fabulous title of 'systems language' which means in Go's case - Server, Google toolchain and Rust's case - embedded, browser.

Right, Go and Rust have different definitions of 'systems language.'

Even Rob Pike thought Go and Ru...errr, C++ would be competing, but was surprised when it turns out they weren't. Go was competing with Python and Ruby all along.

This is true, but Patrick does pop up on a lot of Go threads saying negative things. If the Rust team doesn't want to be perceived as critical of Go then they shouldn't be so vocal about it.

I have lots of negative things to say about Go too, but it has nothing to do with Rust. I also have lots of positive things to say as well, but they have nothing to do with Rust.

I haven't felt that way about pcwalton's comments. Maybe I'm wrong. Care to link some comments?

Just click on his profile and view his comment history. You won't find the examples lacking

I try to be balanced—I've made it clear that I like a lot of the decisions in Go and have no animosity toward the team—but I will stop commenting on Go if you'd like. No big deal.

It's not my place to ask you to do anything, and I didn't raise this topic. I'm just saying: if you're wondering why people think the Rust team has a beef with Go, that's one reason.

Eh, Rust and Go have been perceived as direct competitors since the day Rust was announced, and before I even worked on it. They even were more direct competitors before Rust started ironing out its low-level performance story and dropped GC. That perception's hard to shake.

And sure, I did end up learning quite a bit about Go. No, Go didn't make all the design decisions I would have made if I were designing the language, and yes, I've posted about some of those on here (null pointers, generics, zero values, lack of memory safety when racing on maps). But that doesn't mean I think it's a bad language, and I'd even like to use Go at some point for some projects (lack of time, argh).

Sure. I know you feel that way. But "the Rust and Go teams hate each other!" is a delicious and irresistible idea for some. When we are vocally critical of one another it perpetuates that meme whether we mean it or not. :-)

Fair enough.

Please don't stop commenting on Go. There aren't all that many mainstream (sort of...) language implementors who comment here, which makes your point of view rather unique and very interesting. I'd love to see you comment about more languages, not fewer. While I'm definitely something of a Rust fanboi, this goes for anybody with a depth of experience in actually working on a language - I love reading their thoughts about the trade-offs that their own and other languages made.

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