Hacker News Reader

Comment by rubinelli | Hacker News Reader

Java isn't looking too good, either, at least in the desktop. You know your platform has jumped the shark when it comes bundled with a toolbar.

The question is, where to next? I've been watching Go for a while, but it looks like a tool from Googlers, for Googlers. Pulling all my dependencies from HEAD? No, thank you. Ironically, Javascript looks very promising right now, compared with the alternatives.

View on HN

I find it strange that people are hung up on this remote dependency "issue." It's a convenience for small projects and quick samples. There is absolutely nothing stopping you from checking out a Go package locally and importing it just like any other dependency in any other language.

I'd have to agree here. There is no difference between Go's way of managing external dependencies, compared to any other language/platform where you use external packages. Whether they are manually downloaded and built, or pulled from some kind of source-control repo. The `go get ...` approach is just a convenience tool you can use /IF/ you want to.

I get the impression that much of the complaints stem from not really understanding what is actually happening. It's a shame really. People taking a first look at Go, and running into these kind of rants will get an entirely incorrect impression of the Go tool chain.

The real shame is that so many people are willing to outsource their opinion-building to random ranters on random message boards.

Which is pretty much why people think .Net is dying in the first place.

It encourages package creators to simply maintain a master branch instead of creating stable releases, and this can turn into a huge headache down the line.

Let's take a recent scenario: the YAML vulnerability in Rails. What if a similar vulnerability is found in a widely-used Go project? Well, you can move to HEAD, but you have no idea what else changed in the meantime. It's impossible to know how your application may break. Or you can try to merge just the security patch, which may not be trivial.

"You know your platform has jumped the shark when it comes bundled with a toolbar.", that was such a sad episode. Oh well, while the Android ecosystem doesn't make a switch, I guess I'll keep using it.

It's coming, with the head of ChromeOS taking over Android now.

How exactly is Javascript a promising alternative platform to the JVM or .NET? Javascript is a language. Which Javascript platform are you talking about, that provides alternative ways to do what JVM and .NET do?

The JVM is getting better and better, by the way. Java 8 will be a better language with lambdas and closures. Groovy, Scala, Clojure, Jython, JRuby, and other JVM language implementations are currently great options for developing both portable desktop apps and web apps.

Not sure where Go fits into this either, Go is more of a replacement for C++ by and for Googlers who got sick of C++'s pain points.

With HMTL 5, Javascript, and a fast VM, you can do a lot of damage nowadays.

And the problem with Java isn't technical. I have a couple of Sun certificates, use it every day, and know what it can do. The problem is that I don't want to depend on a company that doesn't even pretend to have customers and developers' best interests at heart.

Oh, I'm not a fan of Oracle either. Who is?

But I think you're confusing a language with a development platform/VM/runtime.

C# is a language. .NET is a platform that includes a C# compiler. Java is a language. JVM is a platform that includes a Java compiler. Javascript is a language, not a platform.

What Javascript platform do you think can replace .NET and JVM? Node.js on top of V8?

Or are you really suggesting that Javascript inside a web browser is all you need for application development anymore?

Frankly, I'm not sure. A stripped browser + Node.js sounds pretty compelling, but there are tons of projects using Javascript or offering Javascript bindings right now. It could be Qt 5, for example.

What killed go for me, except for the unplesant "mangled c" syntax, was the importing. When I read about that remote import nonesense I laughed a bit and marked it off.

The remote package importing is quiet easy to work around and to lock on things. It actually forces you to think about the process and tracking more. But also, dismissing Go solely because if that doesnt do it justice. Same as any language...

The Java browser plugin is thankfully dying--that's what comes with the toolbar.

Java on the server is still going very strong; in fact I believe many of Google's services are still coded in Java.

Java started out as a language for creating interactive apps on set top boxes. In a way, Android is a more natural home for Java than servers.

I like Haxe as a Java replacement.

You want to do JavaScript on the desktop? No. Go learn Python and Haskell.

Haskell on the desktop? You should have stopped with Go.

No no, I want to use Haswell on the desktop!

In fact, I was looking into something like this, so I could theoretically do Python or Javascript with Bootstrap: http://bellite.io/docs/quickstart/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com