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Comment by BringTheTanks | Hacker News Reader

Asking "why" is a sign of curiosity, a desire to gain insight from the experience of those who are, apparently, willing to share it with us.

Using fashionable tech X is not bad on its own. But without the "why" we have no clue what the author's reasons for the given choices are, and how the end results align with the initial reasons.

Lots of small businesses have driven themselves off a cliff basing their tech choices on what their employees would "enjoy" most. It's a good reason to code Go in your free time, but not to migrate a company's infrastructure to it.

It's very strange to see that you wouldn't want to know "why". Maybe you're smarter than all of us.

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The "why" I'm seeing here is not the curious type, it's demanding justification. It's telling people they must explain themselves thoroughly, to defend their decision every single time they choose to use it.

Go is sufficiently mature enough that those questions need not be asked any longer. Docker is built on it, Google's Vitess database sharding system (which powers YouTube, of all things) is built on it. Nobody is at risk of "driving themselves off a cliff" for choosing Go, provided they are proficient enough with it.

I haven't seen any other language get as much hate as Go does on this site.

If I'm asked why I use the technologies I use in my projects, I'd gladly give specific engineering and business reasons, and not just say "YouTube uses it".

We should be ready to have these technical discussions and encourage them, not be so strangely defensive about it as you seem to be.

If you used Java, C/C++, PHP, Python, or Ruby, nobody would bother to ask why, because "everybody uses it". Because they are mature and proven technologies. Just like Go is.

And I do love technical discussions around Go vs any of those or other languages, or indeed even discussions having nothing to do with Go, but I'm tired of all of the hateful comments Go developers get.

If I seem defensive it's because I am constantly put on the defensive.

My apps are service-oriented, and every service is in a different language. And for every one of them I and my team ask ourselves "why".

The only one framing the debate so negatively here is you. As a fan of "Go" you should be taking the opportunity to educate people about it.

Instead, I'm left with a bad taste in my mouth. Let's hope this mood is not representative of the Go community.

> The only one framing the debate so negatively here is you.

"hipsterism" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9394483

"pure tech fashionismo" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9394119

"Hype Driven Development" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9394371

These are the comments driving my responses which are negatively addressing the developer's choice of language, and those are only the ones on this thread. I'm sick of Hacker News trying to make developers feel guilty for using a technology.

I have not argued against anyone asking "why" in regards to what language they feel is best suited to the task at hand. Obviously that question needs asked for any project. I am arguing against everyone whose instant response to "we built X in Go" with "oh god why would you do that" types of "why". There is a distinction in those whys, and if you cannot or will not recognize that distinction then that is your own failing.

I am not involved with or representative of the Go community. I represent only myself.

If you're starting something new and decide to pick something for even no better reason than "I like it", great.

If you use something else and decided to switch to one of those languages, someone might well ask why. Rewriting is almost always a decision that needs some justification.

> If you used Java, C/C++, PHP, Python, or Ruby, nobody would bother to ask why

People ask "why?" about conversions to those languages all the time (if you converted a web project from PHP to C/C++, I'd expect you'd get more "why?" questions than doing the same thing from PHP to Go.)

> Go is sufficiently mature enough that those questions need not be asked any longer. Docker is built on it

So... just so I can get the chain of thought, here:

   * the language has growing for a while
   
   * people have used it to ship something

Therefore, no more need to ask questions -- just switch to it!

> I haven't seen any other language get as much hate as Go does on this site.

Given the amount of criticism PHP and JavaScript get on this site, this statement is simply indefensible.

And a lot of the criticism Go gets is concrete and a direct result of choices the language designers consciously made.

> Therefore, no more need to ask questions -- just switch to it!

Well, sure, if you want to twist my words then go ahead.

What I said rather clearly, but seems to have been lost on you, is that questions not asked in earnest but in flippant disregard for the developer's choices are not welcome.

And my statement on the hate Go gets is certainly defensible. I never questioned the criticisms, I'm not here to say Go is perfect, only to rail against the senseless vitriol that is guaranteed to fill the comments on every Go-related link posted to Hacker News.

> I haven't seen any other language get as much hate as Go does on this site.

While not from the same people or for the same reasons, JavaScript, Dart, and Java all get plenty of hate here. Conversely, Go also gets plenty of love as well as the hate (probably more than any of JS, Dart, or Java does.)

Its high visibility in the community here, so it get lots of attention, positive and negative.

That's a reasonable assessment and I agree.

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