05:19 <malia> ,,

05:29 <devyn> whitequark: its error handling? it feels kinda gross honestly

05:29 <devyn> it's like they were trying to do C-like error handling but slightly better

05:30 <devyn> and that's what it is,

05:30 <devyn> but that doesn't mean I want to use it

05:30 <devyn> Go is supposed to be a “systems programming” language, but I think there's an internal conflict between low-level and high-level within it

05:31 <devyn> I think, quite frankly, that it's too big to be a low-level language

05:31 <devyn> it's more like a lower-level Java

05:31 <devyn> or C++ but somewhat higher-level

05:33 <malia> devyn?

05:34 <devyn> hey malia

05:34 <devyn> how are you?

05:35 <malia> doing good devyn no problem. good to see you. I haven't been on in ages.

05:36 <devyn> I haven't been around much either

05:36 <devyn> but I'm on spring break now

05:36 <devyn> starting today

05:36 <devyn> so

05:36 <devyn> it'll be nice

05:38 <malia> oh great, devyn spring break is hella good. I've been just totally involved with stuff and have had no computer time believe it or not.

05:43 <devyn> oh, cool. what sort of thing do you get involved with?

05:49 <malia> devyn I have been playing a heckuva lot of tennis... by the time I get home it is cook dinner and CRASH........I have become a maniac

05:50 <malia> or not cook dinner like tonight and crash--just had protein powder in almond milk

05:51 <malia> I will bbl, my turn in the shower.... :) totally happy to see you devyn

05:51 <devyn> :) you too, malia

05:51 <devyn> hang in there

05:52 <malia> (hugs) great to see you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

06:20 <malia> ahh better

06:21 <malia> so, devyn what do you have planned for your break?

09:46 <Nuck> Oh wow

09:47 <Nuck> malia

09:47 <Nuck> That's a name I haven't seen since I first joined #elliottcable

09:47 <Nuck> Forgot that Obama's daughter used to hang out here.

13:00 <vil> I don't think I've met malia

14:29 <whitequark> devyn: hmm

14:29 <whitequark> I certainly agree that mandatory GC is a no-no for a generic systems programming language

14:29 <whitequark> you couldn't really implement an OS kernel in it

14:30 <whitequark> I won't say that Go is "big". It took me two hours to read and (mostly?) understand the spec.

14:30 <whitequark> Compared to both C (death by a thousand special cases) and C++ (bloated and overcomplicated beyond any reason), that's quite good.

14:33 <alexgordon> Go fills a weird hole where it's too high overhead to be a viable replacement for C++, but it's too totalitarian to be a replacement for Python

14:34 <alexgordon> it basically competes with Java

14:34 <whitequark> interesting

14:34 <whitequark> it's the second time someone compares Go with Java

14:34 <whitequark> but there's a problem with that.

14:35 <whitequark> Java, as a language, is a) very mediocre b) very, very different from Go.

14:35 <whitequark> disregard a), actually, it doesn't matter here

14:35 <alexgordon> well I'd put Haskell in that niche too

14:35 <alexgordon> Haskell is definitely nothing like Java

14:35 <whitequark> the b) consists of several parts. Java doesn't have unsafe operations. Java shields you from the platform-specific details. Etc.

14:36 <whitequark> Java is heavily used by enterprise, much because it's kinda bureaucratic. You can take a thousand monkeys, make them write Java and the resulting ERP system will run. It will be bad, it will regularly crash, but it will work.

14:37 <whitequark> I don't really see how Java, as a language, and its target market, can be a realistic competition to Go.

14:37 <whitequark> There's also JVM, which is awesome because it is a heavily optimizing runtime for running dynamic languages, and which has even less to do with Go.

14:38 <whitequark> (b) Go isn't even object-oriented.

14:38 <alexgordon> because it's in the same performance/"strictness" class

14:38 <whitequark> So. How does it compete with Java?

14:38 <whitequark> performance doesn't matter

14:38 <alexgordon> it matters to me

14:38 <whitequark> well, then Go competes with Java within your head ;)

14:38 <whitequark> I'd like to view a more global picture

14:39 <alexgordon> my head matters!

14:39 <alexgordon> there's two attributes you can't change about a programming language: how well code written in it performs, and how good it is at preventing bugs

14:40 <whitequark> alexgordon: both false

14:40 <alexgordon> I can write the same kind of thing in Haskell or Java, and it may look very different, but I will end up with more or less code that performs the same (not super slow, not super fast), and with not an insane number bugs (unlike with Python)

14:40 <whitequark> the first: https://twitter.com/whitequark/status/312354151604568064

14:41 <whitequark> the second: you can write in Python in the 90's C++ style (compile it, click it, crash it), or you could use TDD

14:41 <whitequark> the language is same, the result is drastically different

14:41 <alexgordon> I'm talking about planet earth though

14:42 <whitequark> ok?

14:43 <whitequark> as per performance, yeah, look at MRI 1.8 and JRuby. the difference is ~several orders of magnitude in some cases.

14:44 <alexgordon> I wasn't comparing MRI and JRuby?

14:45 <whitequark> alexgordon: to quote you, "a programming language"

14:45 <alexgordon> pypy may be faster than cpython but cpython is the one that people actually use, so it's what matters

14:45 <whitequark> you made a general statement which is incorrect

14:45 <alexgordon> this isn't #pedants

14:47 <whitequark> that doesn't mean you could state an incorrect fact and get away with it?

14:47 <whitequark> or well, you obviously can state whatever you want, but then I don't care

14:48 <alexgordon> not really

14:48 <whitequark> hm?

17:50 <Nuck> Y'know what? Fuck this. I'm gonna just implement the O(god wat) algorithm for this

17:56 <whitequark> suddenly a wild velociraptor appears