twoism / go-is-not-good

A curated list of articles complaining that go (golang) isn't good enough

What's this

This repository is a list of articles that complain about golang's imperfection.

Motivation

Seems like complaining about go's flaws is becoming a trend. Any newbie must have a chance to read all the go-is-bad arguments before they go too far. So here it is.

The list

• https://dzone.com/articles/i-don%E2%80%99t-much-get-go (Jon Davis, 2010)
  • no language interoperability (only C)
  • no versioning model
  • no OOP
  • has pointers
  • no semicolons at line endings
  • no this
  • no overloading
  • no exceptions
• https://uberpython.wordpress.com/2012/09/23/why-im-not-leaving-python-for-go/ (Yuval Greenfield, 2012)
  • error handling
  • stuck in 70's
  • panic instead of exceptions
• http://www.darkcoding.net/software/go-lang-after-four-months/ (Graham King, 2012)
  • un-googlable name
  • stuck in 70's
  • no exceptions
  • is compiled
  • too young
• http://jozefg.bitbucket.org/posts/2013-08-23-leaving-go.html (Danny Gratzer, 2013)
  • no generics
  • is not extensible
• http://magicmakerman.blogspot.ru/2013/07/why-googles-go-programming-language.html (Magic Maker Man, 2013)
  • no OOP
  • no asserts
  • has pointers
  • mascot sucks (gopher)
• http://how-bazaar.blogspot.ru/2013/04/the-go-language-my-thoughts.html (Tim Penhey, 2013)
  • error handling
  • inconvenient range
  • no generics
• http://corte.si/posts/code/go/go-rant.html (Aldo Cortesi, 2013)
  • too opinionated
• http://yager.io/programming/go.html (Will Yager, 2014)
  • no generics
  • no operator overloading
  • nil as a failure marker
  • type inference is too simple
  • no immutables
  • no pattern matching
• http://blog.mattbasta.com/things_that_make_me_sad_in_go.html (Matt Basta, 2014)
  • project layout is bad
  • can't import packages relatively
  • different build approaches
  • no sugar for slices
  • lack of basic data structures
• http://dtrace.org/blogs/wesolows/2014/12/29/golang-is-trash/ (Keith Wesolowski, 2014)
  • the worst compiler toolchain ever
  • psuedointellectual arrogance of Rob Pike and everything he stands for
  • confusing and undebuggable
• http://blog.goodstuff.im/golang (David Pollak, 2015)
  • no immutables
  • too simple
  • stupid syntax
  • too opinionated
  • error handling
  • stuck in 70's
  • no generics
  • method access modifiers (upper/lower case for public/private)
  • no map and filter
• http://nomad.so/2015/03/why-gos-design-is-a-disservice-to-intelligent-programmers/ (Gary Willoughby, 2015)
  • too simple
  • no generics
  • bad dependency management
  • stuck in 70's
• http://spaces-vs-tabs.com/4-weeks-of-golang-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/ (Freddy Rangel, 2015)
  • not-so-obvious slices behaviour
  • error handling
  • hard to test, hard to mock
• http://byrd.im/go-is-poor (Ian Byrd, 2015)
  • slice manipulations are broken
  • nil interfaces are not entirely nil
  • funny variable shadowing
  • no first-class support of interfaces
  • questionable compiler rigidity
  • go generate is a quirk
• https://kaushalsubedi.com/blog/2015/11/10/golang-sucks-heres-why/ (Kaushal Subedi, 2015)
  • no generics
  • slow json parsing
  • bad dependency management
  • no subpackages

Get involved

Feel free to add a PR with a new or old article you found on the internet. The structure is simple, just look at existing entries. Sort items chronologically.

• link (Author, year of publication)

• common complaint 1
• common complaint 2

todo

• make reverse index: each common complaint to list of links to articles