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Comment by cmrdporcupine | Hacker News Reader

Let me just say that I've been at Google for almost 9 years, and have recently started looking for work elsewhere and it seems that Go is far more popular outside of Google than inside it. Which disappoints me because my experiences with the language internally have biased me such that I have no desire to go use it elsewhere.

I've said this before, but I think it's a bit dishonest to sell this as a "Google language." It is an accepted language here, along with Python, Java, JS/TS, Dart, and C++. But it is by no means dominant.

To put it another way, it seems if the goal is to avoid working in Go I am better off staying @ Google than leaving. And that's weird, and maybe revealing.

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If you look at the way the rest of the industry cargo-cults Google, Go almost looks like a false flag attack to increase Google's competitive advantage while the cargo-cults drown in boilerplate and an inability to abstract.

My current and last positions both involve(d) writing (mostly) Go code, so it's definitely possible to find Go jobs within Google.

OP wants to avoid using golang, not to find a job where he can use it.

This comment doesn’t tell me anything about why you don’t like go, just that you don’t like it.

Other people have touched on that and I've opined on it in the past, I don't think this is the thread for that. I think you'll find HN is a divided community on golang. Myself I find the language... kind of insulting... in its lack of basic modern constructs. I find its emerging prevalence to be a concerning trend, and I think it's going to lead to a lot of brittle, boilerplate code. Obviously others disagree. I'll leave it at that.

But whats the point of coming in this thread and insulting the language repeatedly without explaining any of your insults? why do you feel like this type of unconstructive criticism is appropriate in this thread, and actually explaining your point of view is not?

The thread is about Go language adoption, and so I stayed on that topic. I made a remark about my observations of the language adoption within Google, and what I perceive outside of Google. The bits about my tastes for this are a personal commentary and are related to why I'm interested in this topic: I don't like the language and don't want to work in it.

I don't really care that you find that un-constructive, as you can go elsewhere to get people's critiques of the language, there are plenty of them and they come up every time someone posts about Go here. My opinion is certainly not unique on this subject.

I just find it frustrating that your comment is "i'm a google engineer and I hate the language and so does everyone else at google" but you refuse to explain why you feel that way. As someone who likes go, I find this comment to be basically "go is bad because google engineers dont like it" which is the exact type of appeal to authority/cargo culting you seem to be criticizing.

If you're going to trash something at least put in enough effort to explain yourself. Otherwise I think this thread was better off without your comment.

Pretty sure it wasn't "so does everyone else at Google." I challenge you to find that quote. Not at all representative of what I said. Stop casting aspersions on me.

I think you might be a little too emotionally attached to Go? I am allowed to have a subjective opinion on Go and voice it in public discussion forum. This is not a scientific paper or journal article.

You're allowed to do whatever you want, as am I. I claim that your comment was unconstructive and paraphrased the meaning of your comment. I didn't learn anything about the weaknesses of Go from reading your comment, I learned that you don't like it and there was a vague suggestion that it is unpopular at google, and that the reason its popular outside of google has to do with cargo culting. But you neglected to express why you thought its weaknesses of go (what are those weaknesses?) that leads to this situation.

I would genuinely like to know what your criticism of the language is, but you haven't offered any. The comment you wrote does not add any clarity to the discussion of Go, in fact I think it takes away clarity by relying on suggestion and avoiding grappling with any details. I think it was not a useful contribution to this thread. I'll leave it at that.

cmrdporcupine stated, at least once, that he didn't consider his reasons for disliking Go to be on-topic for this thread. You seem obsessed with trying to pry the reason out of him. He said he's not going to answer; let it go.

If you have to have an answer, he said he's opined on it in the past. Go trawl through his past comments. (Google search might help.)

> it seems that Go is far more popular outside of Google than inside it

Blame the cargo cult and hype driven development for that one.

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