Re: [9fans] Go and 21-bit runes (and a bit of Go status)

[lucio@proxima.alt.za]

> I have not been able
> to discern why people are excited about Go; that is why I asked the
> question.  As far as I can tell, Go is just a de-facto web programming
> language, in direct lineage from perl through python.  If that's all the
> "there" there, then I'll just ignore it instead.  If there's something
> more to be said for it, I would like to know.

Almost certainly, Google's involvement is a significant part of the
equation, anyone who denies this is probably delusional (or different
from me, which really makes no difference from my point of view).

The primary objective stated by Rob Pike and in my opinion already
largely achieved in the development of Go was to provide a compiled
language with static typing that could compete in speed of deployment
with the many interpreter where dynamic typing ruled.  It needed to
compile faster than C++ and Java and be comparable in execution speed.

In this respect, Go has been mostly a success, although there are
performance issues that have not yet been sorted out.  The most
important of these is the garbage collector which is undergoing
considerable redesign right now.  The curren model was built out of
necessity without sufficient data points to optimise it; it included a
"stop-the-world" misfeature that has yet to be removed, but is in the
process of being designed out.

Additional objectives have also been achieved: multitasking
primitives, portability across diverse platforms, high readability,
conceptual simplicity, similarity to conventional languages and even
the ability to link to modules written in C and C++, inclusion in the
GNU language package, many more I can't possibly recall.

There is plenty of documentation out there.  If I were to write a
comprehensive dissertation condensing this information into a single
document, I find it difficult to believe that you would trouble
yourself to read it any more than you have read the contents of the
golang.org site.

If you consider such documentation hand-waving, then I doubt you're
interested in hearing more of the same.

++L