The Tao of Go | Hacker News Reader

The Tao of Go

bitfieldconsulting.com

30 pointssigna1120 comments

After I scrolled through the article looking for something concrete, I clicked on "Best Go books for 2023", and found that 5 of 6 books in the list were by the same person - which, unsurprisingly, is also the owner of the website. I think this site needs a bit less self-promotion and a bit more actually helpful content...

The article introduces the concept of Tao as following the natural tendency of things, but then arbitrarily defines principles on how to program (and has nothing to do with Go specifically).

I would have been more interested in the "actual Tao": the patterns that naturally emerge from the language's design (if there are any).

Is TypeScript a clear violation of Tao then, going against the "typeless" (not really) nature of JavaScript?

One could argue that the types are there in Javascript implicity, and TypeScript just brings them out.

you can read Carl M. Johnson's paper about Dao and computation. http://www.carlsensei.com/docs/essays/dao-and-computation.pd...

Unbelievable amount of buzzwords for a programming language...

So now we are using eastern philosophical concepts to guide us in our programming?

As if this article is about programming.

It’s been a middle-class white boy meme since Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It’s ridiculous, but it’s so embedded in Western culture by now I find it hard to get exercised about it.

Missing out on all that existentialism and stoic development methodologies though.

“Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know.” ― Lao Tsu, Tao Teh Ching

I do like articles like this, but this one was bit generic, could apply to any language.

Too much Tao, not enough Go. Code samples!

That is not the way of the Tao. :)

but not the way of the programmer

If you need 1 code sample, you need too many. If you need 0 code samples, you don’t need enough.

in the mood of asian fetishisation, are we? i can't, in good conscience read it in any other way. why should you read programming from the lens of this side? is, say, seneca's stoicism not cool enough for you? how about you talk about the phenomenon of if (err!=nil) return err; repetition from the perspective of lovecraftian lore?

this kind of thing reminds me of mcmeditation and jack of twitter.

> why should you read programming from the lens of this side? is, say, seneca's stoicism not cool enough for you?

Why not both? More lenses == better

sure. but where is this thing? vast amount of teaching material contains "koan", "zen", "dao". fetishisation at the fullest. it's like anything that comes from the east is like an animal in the zoo. where's golang for stoic or haskell for cynic or java for hedonist?

You missed kata.

Java is not for hedonists. Java's for flagellants.

But if you write Programming for Stoics, I'd very much like to read it.

Only if it came with code to justify the Go in the title.

Try this instead (which probably was the inspiration of this article): https://the-zen-of-go.netlify.app/

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