4 ms·

How come a reinvention of a 30 year old wheel is more successful and popular than pretty much every language that attempted to evolve the wheel during that time

How come a reinvention of a 30 year old wheel is more successful and popular than pretty much every language that attempted to evolve the wheel during that time? "It's because people who like Go are stupid and companies need stupid people to write stupid code" may have made you feel smug and secure during the last 15 years, but what about the next 15? Or the 15 after that? Are you still going to be complaining about the stupid 70 year old wheel made by that dumb guy Pike that you hate so much?

int_19h 1y ago
If you really want to make an argument from popularity, C, C++, C#, and Java are all more popular than Go.
- elvlysh 1y ago
  Yes, and all are equally offensive to the average Go hater, all of them have NULL, and all of them have terrible error handling. It's not "argument from popularity", it's "argument from success". Some things succeed. Other things don't. It would be worthwhile for you to investigate why things succeed despite all the hangups you have with their flaws instead of lamenting them because the things you like aren't succeeding.
  - int_19h 1y ago
    It's pretty clear at this point that your "average Go hater" is largely a strawman. There are many reasons to dislike Go, and different people have various combinations of pet peeves that don't neatly translate to this mental image of, "they must also hate C# and C++ and Java then!". Argument from success disregards the simple fact that, in this day and age, no language succeeds without massive corporate backing - and, conversely, a large corporation can throw money at a language to prop it up in a situation where it would struggle to get market share otherwise. So, no, the fact that Go is as popular as it is, is not particularly interesting. If it actually overtook Java - its most direct spiritual competitor - then yeah, I'd consider that a more serious data point.

int_19h 1y ago

If you really want to make an argument from popularity, C, C++, C#, and Java are all more popular than Go.

elvlysh 1y ago
Yes, and all are equally offensive to the average Go hater, all of them have NULL, and all of them have terrible error handling. It's not "argument from popularity", it's "argument from success". Some things succeed. Other things don't. It would be worthwhile for you to investigate why things succeed despite all the hangups you have with their flaws instead of lamenting them because the things you like aren't succeeding.
- int_19h 1y ago
  It's pretty clear at this point that your "average Go hater" is largely a strawman. There are many reasons to dislike Go, and different people have various combinations of pet peeves that don't neatly translate to this mental image of, "they must also hate C# and C++ and Java then!". Argument from success disregards the simple fact that, in this day and age, no language succeeds without massive corporate backing - and, conversely, a large corporation can throw money at a language to prop it up in a situation where it would struggle to get market share otherwise. So, no, the fact that Go is as popular as it is, is not particularly interesting. If it actually overtook Java - its most direct spiritual competitor - then yeah, I'd consider that a more serious data point.