TIL: Go is actually pretty amazing (kbin.melroy.org)

submitted 1 month ago by melroy@kbin.melroy.org to c/til@kbin.melroy.org

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I am able to use different programming languages. I know most of the well-known languages without any problems: C, C++, Java, Python, JavaScript, Typescript, PHP...

However, I wanted to expand my horizon. Zig didn't do much for me neither did Rust, but now that I've written some Golang. I admit, I'm intrigued by the language.

I love the fact it's compiled to native machine language. There is still one caveat: despite Go being a GC language, you often still need to manage your memory. Sound strange right? But I needed to use io.Copy instead of io.ReadAll to avoid memory issues. But also you need to explicitly call defer res.Body.Close() to avoid Go not cleaning-up the HTTP response.. Ow well, so you learn it the hard way. Overall, I'm still very optimistic with Go. And looking forward to use it more often in some of my open-source projects.

See my first project in Go: https://gitlab.melroy.org/melroy/gitlab-artifact-deployer-go. Which I wrote in 3 days.

Did you try Go? What are your thoughts?

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[-] chrash0@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago

yeah Go’s pretty good, especially for web services. i don’t have much of a space in my toolbox for it personally, though that’s not a fault of the language.

there’s a difference between managing memory and managing resources more generally. a GC doesn’t know when you’re done dealing with a file or a database connection or some other collection of data structures that has some semantically non-deterministic lifetime.

Rust however can close resources automatically with its lifetime mechanism ;)

[-] melroy@kbin.melroy.org 2 points 1 month ago

True true, Rust can indeed automatically close resources with its lifetime mechanisms. However, I found Rust very painful to program in. Totally skill issue! However, I didn't like Rust yet. Maybe when you really need Rust, I can imagine you want to do that route.

[-] sazey@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

I love Rust but hate how it is typed, gives me RSI.

[-] Thcdenton@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

Yup! I had a great time with go.

[-] melroy@kbin.melroy.org 2 points 1 month ago

Nice!.. I don't know who down voted you, but glad to hear.

[-] cornshark@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

https://fasterthanli.me/articles/i-want-off-mr-golangs-wild-ride

[-] melroy@kbin.melroy.org 1 points 1 month ago

Thanks, I will read it today!

[-] BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.de 3 points 1 month ago

NO GO SUCKS /s

[-] melroy@kbin.melroy.org 2 points 1 month ago

Why don't you like go? Or?

[-] BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.de 2 points 1 month ago

watch the /s 😁

[-] melroy@kbin.melroy.org 3 points 1 month ago

Ow sorry. It was sarcasm.

[-] BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.de 1 points 1 month ago

nor worries 😁

[-] melroy@kbin.melroy.org 1 points 1 month ago

hahaha. Thanks

[-] BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.de 2 points 1 month ago

I got a notification as well. On my PC and my Phone. I missed this so much :D

[-] melroy@kbin.melroy.org 1 points 1 month ago

Hmm Not on the phone. I believe I need to keep the site open or the app in order to get the notification in my case.

[-] BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.de 1 points 1 month ago

Which browser are you using on your phone?

[-] melroy@kbin.melroy.org 1 points 1 month ago

Brave... (I was using Opera /Opera mini, but that drove me crazy recently)

[-] BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.de 1 points 1 month ago

Brave? O.o "Please, do not use Brave" - https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/5933715

But anyways, it's Chromium based and I didn't try out chromium based android browsers, so maybe that is a caveat. Do you have the PWA installed or just the regular site open?

But now that I think of it, it should honestly still work. It doesn't communicate through our site, but through their push service, so it would be odd if it would only work if the site is open imo

[-] melroy@kbin.melroy.org 1 points 1 month ago

Yea I know.. I might move to floorp as well or something else Firefox based.

[-] melroy@kbin.melroy.org 1 points 1 month ago

Currently opened the site on regular browser mode. No pwa atm.

[-] BentiGorlich@gehirneimer.de 2 points 1 month ago

Maybe that is the problem. Didn't test it without the PWA...

[-] melroy@kbin.melroy.org 1 points 1 month ago

Uhm.. I can't enable this slider.

[-] laund@hachyderm.io 2 points 1 month ago

@melroy@kbin.melroy.org i recently tried Go for the first time. just trying to parse some nested json from a file was quite painful as there seems to be no easy way to parse arbitrary json. it always needed a struct, which for complex json is quite awful to write out.

safe to say, since i have absolutely no need to the language, i won't be using it

[-] SomeKindaName@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

map[string]any

[-] melroy@kbin.melroy.org 1 points 1 month ago

Thanks for mentioning this. So it is possible without defining the whole struct. Great!

[-] melroy@kbin.melroy.org 1 points 1 month ago

I understand your situation, apparently there are workarounds for with as listed in this comment thread. Statically typed languages catch errors at compile time, ensuring robust code and safer refactoring, while also allowing for better performance optimizations. Their explicit type annotations enhance code clarity and maintainability, making it easier to understand and manage large codebases. This leads to more reliable and efficient backend systems.

[-] laund@hachyderm.io 1 points 1 month ago

@melroy@kbin.melroy.org i mean, you can have a statically typed language and safely handle arbitrayry json. you just need Tagged Union types in the language, which make it easy to type hierarchical structures where each level is one of a set of types

[-] SwordInStone@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

this is an example of task easier achieved in dynamically typed languages e. g. Ruby, python, elixir

[-] melroy@kbin.melroy.org 1 points 1 month ago

No.. In production you don't want dynamically typed languages. Frankly, even TypeScript is still not good enough (since it still compiles to JS and the value can become any kind of type during runtime), it can cause catastrophic failures and errors in production. When you write a back-end server, I learned my lesson the hard way, I believe you want a statically typed language for better safety, security and mainly predictability at runtime.

Python is fine for some simple scripts here and there, but please do not use it for critical production software. Please ..

[-] Pronell@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

I've tried to learn Go, but I just couldn't wrap my head around it, how to see the field and where to go.

Yes, I suck at the board game.

[-] melroy@kbin.melroy.org 3 points 1 month ago

That is another kind of Go. You are talking about the board game Go. I'm talking about the programming language Go. hehe!

[-] Pronell@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

Yeah, well aware, it just amused me at the time.

this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2024

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