15 ms·

There's active marketing and there's passive marketing (brand association). Go is popular because of its association with the brand of Google and the brand of P

by ootachi 14y ago

There's active marketing and there's passive marketing (brand association). Go is popular because of its association with the brand of Google and the brand of Pike and Thompson. A lot of people like the language on its merits (although I disagree with pretty much every decision they made), but I believe the reason the language got traction is because of its brand association.

batista 14y ago
>Go is popular because of its association with the brand of Google and the brand of Pike and Thompson. A (non factual) jump to conclusion. For one, Go isn't that popular. From the latest TIOBE notes: "Another interesting observation is that while big software-related companies such as Oracle, Microsoft and Apple all have one of their programming languages in the top 10, Google seems to be incapable to achieve the same.Google's Go language dropped out of the top 50 this month". Second, Dart is also associated with the brand of Google and the brand of Lars Bak. Yet, it's totally unpopular. Same goes for Unladden Swallow. Touted by Google, got nowhere, died. (Hell, even things Google spends ton of marketing money on go nowhere: Google Buzz, Google Wave, Google Wallet, ...). >A lot of people like the language on its merits (although I disagree with pretty much every decision they made), but I believe the reason the language got traction is because of its brand association. That might get some early interest in the language, but not continued traction (and not that it has much traction, anyway). People like it because it's fast, the type system gets out of the way, it's not as weird as the lisp-like languages for those used to C syntax, has some cool modern features (from closures, to easy concurrency) and has a big and current standard library. I also happen like the language on its merits. I also believe that most of those who disagree don't share the design goals of the language designers and wanted mostly just another derivative functional language or some fads-of-the-day-in-academia thing like Scala.
- ootachi 14y ago
  Guilty as charged. I do want a functional language like Scala, because I believe that school represents a better design. That school of language design saves me the headache of null pointers; it helps me write unit tests with QuickCheck; it allows me to define custom generic collections; it places emphasis on having a fast GC; it features monadic style to help with error handling.
- eli_gottlieb 14y ago
  >I also happen like the language on its merits. I also believe that most of those who disagree don't share the design goals of the language designers and wanted mostly just another derivative functional language or some fads-of-the-day-in-academia thing like Scala. Oh, goody, jumping for joy, another Industry Versus Academia holy war! Look here. I think Go has some very, very nice ideas in it. I also think it's fundamentally broken by a couple of stupid decisions the designers made: no exceptions, no parametric polymorphism. I also think it's fundamentally pointed at the wrong problem domain: systems languages don't have runtime libraries, don't have garbage collection and don't require operating systems beneath them so that they can write free-standing systems code. Go is a brilliant, but also broken, competitor against C++, Python, Java, and Erlang (especially Erlang) for the applications-language space, especially highly-concurrent applications (as sometimes handled by Erlang, which I will be happy to see Go murder and replace). Go is not remotely a replacement for C. And the exact reason for these things is that Go ignored parametric polymorphism (aka generics) and left out exceptions (which are messed-up in Java by quite widely useful in real programming!). Now, as to "derivative functional languages", there mostly aren't that many. Most derivative work in functional languages gets fed back into Haskell, and nobody expects you to use Haskell for doing Real Work. Haskell does, after all, have the motto, "Avoid success at all costs." And as to "fads-of-the-day-in-academia", Scala is the single best language I've ever used. And I don't even use all of it. I just use the subset of Scala that is Everything Java Should Have Been. It has lambdas and closures. It has just enough type inference. It has mutability control for slots. It has object orientation and case-classes/pattern-matching and type-classes via implicit parameters. Scala lets me figure out what language paradigm I need to Get Stuff Done. It's the Python of statically-typed languages, and it interoperates with a vast outside ecosystem to boot. I can't say as much for every fad-of-the-decade-in-industry thing like Java or Go.
  - cageface 14y ago
    Go is not remotely a replacement for C. This is exactly what crossed it off my list. I am interested in a better language than C++ for writing really fast, low-level code but I already have tons of good options for higher-level code.
  - luriel 14y ago
- discreteevent 14y ago
  In fairness I think its a bit early to say that Dart is totally unpopular. The target market for it isn't tech bloggers and proggit. The people who will potentially use it are those who are primarily driven by the need to get some work done as opposed to evaluating new, evolving languages. They won't use it until all the tools and infrastructure are in place.

by ootachi 14y ago

batista 14y ago

>Go is popular because of its association with the brand of Google and the brand of Pike and Thompson. A (non factual) jump to conclusion. For one, Go isn't that popular. From the latest TIOBE notes: "Another interesting observation is that while big software-related companies such as Oracle, Microsoft and Apple all have one of their programming languages in the top 10, Google seems to be incapable to achieve the same.Google's Go language dropped out of the top 50 this month". Second, Dart is also associated with the brand of Google and the brand of Lars Bak. Yet, it's totally unpopular. Same goes for Unladden Swallow. Touted by Google, got nowhere, died. (Hell, even things Google spends ton of marketing money on go nowhere: Google Buzz, Google Wave, Google Wallet, ...). >A lot of people like the language on its merits (although I disagree with pretty much every decision they made), but I believe the reason the language got traction is because of its brand association. That might get some early interest in the language, but not continued traction (and not that it has much traction, anyway). People like it because it's fast, the type system gets out of the way, it's not as weird as the lisp-like languages for those used to C syntax, has some cool modern features (from closures, to easy concurrency) and has a big and current standard library. I also happen like the language on its merits. I also believe that most of those who disagree don't share the design goals of the language designers and wanted mostly just another derivative functional language or some fads-of-the-day-in-academia thing like Scala.

ootachi 14y ago
Guilty as charged. I do want a functional language like Scala, because I believe that school represents a better design. That school of language design saves me the headache of null pointers; it helps me write unit tests with QuickCheck; it allows me to define custom generic collections; it places emphasis on having a fast GC; it features monadic style to help with error handling.
eli_gottlieb 14y ago
>I also happen like the language on its merits. I also believe that most of those who disagree don't share the design goals of the language designers and wanted mostly just another derivative functional language or some fads-of-the-day-in-academia thing like Scala. Oh, goody, jumping for joy, another Industry Versus Academia holy war! Look here. I think Go has some very, very nice ideas in it. I also think it's fundamentally broken by a couple of stupid decisions the designers made: no exceptions, no parametric polymorphism. I also think it's fundamentally pointed at the wrong problem domain: systems languages don't have runtime libraries, don't have garbage collection and don't require operating systems beneath them so that they can write free-standing systems code. Go is a brilliant, but also broken, competitor against C++, Python, Java, and Erlang (especially Erlang) for the applications-language space, especially highly-concurrent applications (as sometimes handled by Erlang, which I will be happy to see Go murder and replace). Go is not remotely a replacement for C. And the exact reason for these things is that Go ignored parametric polymorphism (aka generics) and left out exceptions (which are messed-up in Java by quite widely useful in real programming!). Now, as to "derivative functional languages", there mostly aren't that many. Most derivative work in functional languages gets fed back into Haskell, and nobody expects you to use Haskell for doing Real Work. Haskell does, after all, have the motto, "Avoid success at all costs." And as to "fads-of-the-day-in-academia", Scala is the single best language I've ever used. And I don't even use all of it. I just use the subset of Scala that is Everything Java Should Have Been. It has lambdas and closures. It has just enough type inference. It has mutability control for slots. It has object orientation and case-classes/pattern-matching and type-classes via implicit parameters. Scala lets me figure out what language paradigm I need to Get Stuff Done. It's the Python of statically-typed languages, and it interoperates with a vast outside ecosystem to boot. I can't say as much for every fad-of-the-decade-in-industry thing like Java or Go.
- cageface 14y ago
  Go is not remotely a replacement for C. This is exactly what crossed it off my list. I am interested in a better language than C++ for writing really fast, low-level code but I already have tons of good options for higher-level code.
- luriel 14y ago
discreteevent 14y ago
In fairness I think its a bit early to say that Dart is totally unpopular. The target market for it isn't tech bloggers and proggit. The people who will potentially use it are those who are primarily driven by the need to get some work done as opposed to evaluating new, evolving languages. They won't use it until all the tools and infrastructure are in place.