[HN Gopher] Less is exponentially more (2012)
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Less is exponentially more (2012)
        
       Author : pieterr
       Score  : 28 points
       Date   : 2022-11-13 17:22 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (commandcenter.blogspot.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (commandcenter.blogspot.com)
        
       | karmakaze wrote:
       | This bit doesn't make sense to me:
       | 
       | > Early in the rollout of Go I was told by someone that he could
       | not imagine working in a language without generic types. As I
       | have reported elsewhere, I found that an odd remark.
       | 
       | > But more important, what it says is that types are the way to
       | lift that burden. Types. Not polymorphic functions or language
       | primitives or helpers of other kinds, but types.
       | 
       | Go always had generics: slice, map, channel. Writing without
       | those I also could not imagine working in.
       | 
       | And if anyone's curious how instead of making Go, C++ could be
       | refactored into a smaller cleaner language, see "Can C++ be 10x
       | Simpler and Safer?"[0]. It even allows for a memory arena that's
       | managed by gc.
       | 
       | [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33573456
        
       | anon23anon wrote:
       | So has Go still held true to this minimalist philosophy?
        
         | doctor_eval wrote:
         | Well, I think so. I only became a Gopher about 5 years ago and
         | the pace of change has actually been faster than I expected,
         | but it always seems to be in the direction of simplification.
         | Examples of things that made life easier since I started using
         | Go are modules and go:embed.
         | 
         | Of course, an exception is generics, which I haven't yet had
         | much to do with, and while it potentially scratches a personal
         | itch of mine (I always felt that builtins like 'append' and
         | 'len' were overly magical), I worry that it's a complication.
         | 
         | But only time will tell.
        
       | cma wrote:
       | > At this point I asked myself a question: Did the C++ committee
       | really believe that was wrong with C++ was that it didn't have
       | enough features?
       | 
       | In the end I think c++11 did make things way better and less
       | error prone than before, largely through new features.
        
         | pencilguin wrote:
         | Yes. Programming in C++11 was an overwhelmingly better
         | experience than before. C++14 is, additionally, much more fun.
         | 
         | Coding C++17 is better than C++14, mainly for its destructured
         | bindings and improved variadics.
         | 
         | Coding C++20 is much better, again. chiefly because of
         | Concepts, but co-routines will become increasingly important as
         | library support surfaces.
         | 
         | It has been a long time since I shipped a memory usage fault.
         | Languages that promise to make those impossible are hyped now,
         | but their promoters are "fighting the last war".
         | 
         | What makes the difference today is productivity. C++ is still
         | leading that charge. Hype notwithstanding, more people take up
         | programming C++ professionally _in any given week_ than the
         | total paid to code Rust. Soon, many of those Rust coders will
         | begin to jump ship for newer languages.
        
           | rhn_mk1 wrote:
           | What makes you say that C++ is leading in productivity? I'm
           | not seeing C++ web applications, or machine learning
           | frameworks. From my own experience, managed languages are
           | easier to write for as well, especially with the average C++
           | code base which barely touches upon C++14.
           | 
           | If productivity is "the current war", then languages like Go,
           | Python, Rust, Elixir, and TypeScript are definitely fighting
           | it, and it's not clear to me that any has significant lead in
           | anything but limited areas.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2022-11-13 23:01 UTC)