Go Alternatives

go reviews and mentions

• APIs in Go with Huma 2.0
  6 projects | dev.to | 6 Dec 2023

  We started to dabble in using Go, and I dove deep into the way the language works and how to write idiomatic Go code using the tools it provides. My confidence with Go quickly improved, and I started to help others to pick it up as well.

• "Every time a new Go release happened, the package stopped building, and the authors had to add a new file with a new //go:build line, and then the entire ecosystem of packages with that as a dependency had to explicitly update to the new version" -- Go itself
  2 projects | /r/programmingcirclejerk | 6 Dec 2023
• Rob Pike: Gobs of data (2011)
  10 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 4 Dec 2023

  Someone made a benchmark of serialization libraries in go [1], and I was surprised to see gobs is one of the slowest ones, specially for decoding. I suspect part of the reason is that the API doesn't not allow reusing decoders [2]. From my explorations it seems like both JSON [3], message-pack [4] and CBOR [5] are better alternatives.

  By the way, in Go there are a like a million JSON encoders because a lot of things in the std library are not really coded for maximum performance but more for easy of usage, it seems. Perhaps this is the right balance for certain things (ex: the http library, see [6]).

  There are also a bunch of libraries that allow you to modify a JSON file "in place", without having to fully deserialize into structs (ex: GJSON/SJSON [7] [8]). This sounds very convenient and more efficient that fully de/serializing if we just need to change the data a little.

  --

  1: https://github.com/alecthomas/go_serialization_benchmarks

  2: https://github.com/golang/go/issues/29766#issuecomment-45492...

  --

  3: https://github.com/goccy/go-json

  4: https://github.com/vmihailenco/msgpack

  5: https://github.com/fxamacker/cbor

  --

  6: https://github.com/valyala/fasthttp#faq

  --

  7: https://github.com/tidwall/gjson

  8: https://github.com/tidwall/sjson

• Optimizing Go string operations with practical examples
  2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 3 Dec 2023

  There's going to be experimental support for built-in iteration in 1.22: https://github.com/golang/go/issues/61897

• How I Contributed One Line of Code to Ethereum
  7 projects | dev.to | 26 Nov 2023

  Being proficient in JavaScript and TypeScript, Geth and Solidity are out of the question, since Geth requires knowledge of Go, while Solidity requires knowing C++.

• Making Games in Go for Absolute Beginners
  17 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 24 Nov 2023

  > I am the developer of Astral Divide, which is entirely written in Go: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2597060/Astral_Divide/

  Your game looks great, congrats on your progress! I especially enjoyed how the zoom works when you're leaving/arrive planets, and the unique propulsion system (also, the anchor made me giggle!).

  > lack of data structure packages

  I tend to not need many, so I'd be curious if you can recall any structure in particular which you couldn't find? No biggie if not.

  > package structure not suited for games

  I'm not a game dev, but I've seen some larger games such as https://github.com/divVerent/aaaaxy/tree/main/internal (if you haven't played it before—do it!) which seem to be able to place everything into separate packages without issue, so perhaps there's something to gleam from their design?

  > maps are random when iterated

  Hash map iteration shouldn't be sorted in _any_ language (here's Rust, for example https://play.rust-lang.org/?version=stable&mode=debug&editio... (Python makes it _appear_ as if dicts are sorted hash maps, but that's only because it doesn't only use a hash table, but a vector as well (same as you'd have to do in Go))), otherwise it would cause both portability and security (https://github.com/golang/go/issues/2630) issues. You can use a b-tree (which was probably the data structure you wanted there) if you aren't willing to sort it yourself.

  > modding options

  If you don't care about unloading https://github.com/pkujhd/goloader

  Go actually has one of the best WASM runtimes https://github.com/tetratelabs/wazero

  It also has a bunch of libraries for embedding scripting languages https://awesome-go.com/embeddable-scripting-languages, with Tengo _probably_ being quickest https://github.com/d5/tengo

  I'd _highly_ recommend Ebitengine in the future, as not only have there been multiple brilliant games using it, but it also has Switch/Android/iOS support, and you can find help with any issue whatsoever in their Discord. People have built 3D games with it, and Hajime is an absolute beast of a developer.

  17 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 24 Nov 2023

  > Your game looks great, congrats on your progress! I especially enjoyed how the zoom works when you're leaving/arrive planets, and the unique propulsion system (also, the anchor made me giggle!).

  Thank you. Feedbacks are very much appreciated. There is still a long was until an eventual release, but it's very fun to work on it.

  > I tend to not need many, so I'd be curious if you can recall any structure in particular which you couldn't find? No biggie if not.

  I had trouble finding basic structures like sets or linked lists, as much as more specific ones like R-tree, M-tree, KD-tree quad-tree or specific kinds of tries.

  When quickly searching on Google, there are pretty much always some results, but when looking at the details it's not that great. Most of the packages have some kind of flaw that was a deal-breaker for me. Most common ones are:

  - The package is something developed by one guy 4 years ago, and has pretty much no stars and is abandoned

  - The structure is somehow backed by the native `map`, meaning that it has the same randomized iteration order

  - There is some kind of logic to try to handle multi-threading, mixed-up with the data structure's logic. Often with mutexes/locks, thus killing the performance. My game is pretty much only mono-thread, and I just need something simple and that does not care about synchronization.

  - The structure is not generic, but only uses `interface{}`

  - The structure lacks tests or have unreadable code made of 1-letter variables

  > I'm not a game dev, but I've seen some larger games such as https://github.com/divVerent/aaaaxy/tree/main/internal (if you haven't played it before—do it!) which seems to be able to place everything into separate packages without issue, so perhaps there's something to gleam from their architecture?

  Thanks for the reference. After looking at it, is seems to me that they are creating really tiny packages made of one or two files. I don't want my codebase to end-up with thousands of 1-file packages, it does not seem very maintainable. I want to keep having packages with clearly defined purposes and domains.

  > Hash map iteration shouldn't be sorted in _any_ language (here's Rust, for example https://play.rust-lang.org/?version=stable&mode=debug&editio... (Python makes it _appear_ as if dicts are sorted hash maps, but that's only because it doesn't only use a hash table, but a vector as well (same as you'd have to do in Go))), otherwise it would cause both portability and security (https://github.com/golang/go/issues/2630) issues. You should probably be using a b-tree if you aren't willing to sort it yourself.

  I think that you didn't understand my message (or I didn't explain clearly enough). I do not need the items to be sorted, I need the iteration order to be consistent.

  Let's say that I insert A, B and C in a map, then want to iterate on it. I will get an unspecified order, maybe ABC, maybe CBA, maybe BAC, which does not matter to me. However, in any language, this order will be consistent across all future iterations unless the data is changed. This is a natural property of any data structure. So if I got CBA in the first loop, I will also get CBA in the second and third loops.

  In golang this is not the case because they actively inserted a random order. It means that even if the data does not change, I may get CBA in the first iteration, but BAC in the second, then ABC... Which created a ton of issues for me.

  > If you don't care about unloading https://github.com/pkujhd/goloader

• Practical nil panic detection for Go
  4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 18 Nov 2023

  You are wrong regardless: there is no such dogma. There are numerous ongoing proposals discussing how to accomplish this. You're welcome to contribute. It took me a minute to find these proposals, as examples:

  https://github.com/golang/go/issues/57644

  https://github.com/golang/go/issues/19412

  I interpret your comments as propagating FUD in bad faith.

• Did Reddit just denylist all IPs?
  2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 14 Nov 2023
• A decade of developing a programming language
  7 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 14 Nov 2023

  > Aren't languages like C notoriously difficult to parse? I've read that they're actually context sensitive.

  All programming languages with identifiers are context-sensitive if you put well-formedness into the grammar. C is not exactly difficult to parse, rather it just needs some specific approach compared to most other languages. The biggest (and technically the only [1]) ambiguity is a confusion between type-specifier and primary-expression, which is a roundabout way to say that `(A) * B` is either a multiplication or a dereference-then-cast expression depending on what `A` is in the current scope. But it also has a typical solution that works for most parsers: parser keeps a stack of scopes with contained identifiers, and lexer will distinguish type identifiers from other identifiers with that information. This approach is so popular that even has a name "semantic feedback".

  [1] As an example, the notorious pointer and array declaration syntax is actually an unambiguous context-free grammar. It is notorious only because we humans can't easily read one.

  > IIRC much of Go's syntax was designed to avoid parsing complexity.

  Go's semantics (in particular, name resolution and module system) was designed to avoid complexity. Its syntax is quite normal, modulo personal and subjective bits which all languages have. I can't see any particular mention of syntax decision to performance in the initial spec document [2].

  [2] https://github.com/golang/go/blob/18c5b488a3b2e218c0e0cf2a7d...

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