undefined | Better HN

0 pointsusrbinbash2y ago0 comments

> In twenty years the industry will look back on golang as an avoidable mistake

And here is my opinion:

I think in 20 years, Go will still be a mainstream language. As will C and Python. As will Javascript, god help us all.

And while all these languages will still be very much workhorses of the industry, we will have the next-next-next iteration of "Languages that incorporate all that we have learned about programming language design over the last N decades". And they will still be in the same low-single-percentage-points of overall code produced as their predecessors, waiting for their turn to vanish into obscurity when the next-next-next-next iteration of that principle comes along.

And here is why:

Simple tools don't prevent good engineering, and complex tools don't ensure it. There are arcs that were built in ancient Rome, that are still standing TODAY. There are buildings built 10 years ago that are already crumbling.

0 comments

stouset2y ago

> I think in 20 years, Go will still be a mainstream language. As will C and Python. As will Javascript, god help us all.

And yet the mainstream consensus is that C and JavaScript are terrible languages with deep design flaws. These weren’t as obvious pr avoidable at the time, but they’re realities we live with because they’re entrenched.

My assertion is that in twenty years, we’ll still be stuck with go but the honeymoon will be over and its proponents will finally be able to honestly accept and discuss its design flaws. Further, we’ll for the most part collectively accept that—unlike C and JavaScript—the worst of these flaws were own goals that could have and should have been avoided at the time. I further assert that there will never be another mainstream statically-typed language that makes the mistake of nil.

For that matter I think we’ll be stuck with Rust too. But I think the consensus will be that its flaws were a result of its programming model being somewhat novel and that it was a necessary step towards even better things, rather than a complete misstep.

usrbinbashOP2y ago

> And yet the mainstream consensus is that C and JavaScript are terrible languages with deep design flaws.

Oh, they all have flaws. But whether these make them "terrible" is a matter of opinion. Because they are certainly all very much usable, useful and up to the tasks they were designed for, or they would have vanished a long time ago.

> and its proponents will finally be able to honestly accept and discuss its design flaws

We are already doing that.

But that doesn't mean we have to share anyones opinion on what is or isn't a terrible language, or their opinions about what languages we should use.

And yes, that is all these are: opinions. The only factually terrible languages are the ones noone uses, and not even all languages that vanished into obscurity are there because people thought them to be "terrible".

Go does a lot of things very well, is very convenient to use, solves a lot of very real problems, and has a lot to offer that is important and useful to us. That's why we use it. Opinions about which languages are supposedly "terrible" and which are not, is not enough to change that.

An new language has to demonstrate to us that its demands on our time are worth it. It doesn't matter if it implements the newest findings about how PLs should be designed according to someones opinion, it doesn't matter if its the bees knees and the shiniest new thing, it doesn't matter if it follows paradigm A and includes feature B...the only thing that matters is: "Are the advantages this new thing confers so important to us, that we have a net benefit from investing the time and effort to switch?"

If the answer to that question is "No", then coders won't switch, because they have no reason to do so. And to be very clear about something: The only person who can answer if that switch is worth for any given programmer, is that programmer.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse