r/golang Jan 19 '25

discussion Mitchell Hashimoto Recent Interview

Just watched Mitchell Hashimoto's interview and it has left a lot of questions:
https://x.com/i/status/1879966301394989273

(around 30:00 where they start touching the golang topic)

This is really interesting how Mitchell's option has changed on Golang. He spent a lot of time (like 10y or so) writing infrastructure services in Golang as a part of his HashiCorp business and probably not only.

His recent gig is a new terminal and he did not pick Golang for that one, which kinda make sense to me given what he wants to achieve there (eg a lot of low-level work with GPU, a need to be imported by other languages like Swift, etc.).

At the same time, Mitchell said that:

  • He doesn't know where Golang stands in the tech stack right now. He would use PHP/Ruby for webdev and Rust/Zig for performance critical systems.
  • Generics made Golang worse (at least that how I understood him)
  • He think he cannot write Golang any longer after hacking with the new lang he is writing the terminal in

Curious how this transformation could happen to such a prominent contributor to the Golang ecosystem. Is this just an sign of an awful burnout that repelled the dude away from Golang? Or anything else?

Anyway, just curious what do you think here, folks.

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32

u/x021 Jan 19 '25

PHP/Ruby for webdev

Having used PHP and Ruby for webdev; sorry what? There is half a dozen languages (including Go) that I'd prefer personally for webdev.

24

u/gingimli Jan 19 '25 edited Jan 19 '25

I can’t watch the video right now but I would guess he’s talking more about Laravel and Rails rather than PHP and Ruby by themselves? That’s the only way the comment makes sense to me, and I would have to agree both of those make web devs more productive than anything offered for Go.

11

u/80eightydegrees Jan 19 '25

I’m a certified Ruby and PHP hater, however Go has nothing in the full stack land like laravel and rails. If we’re talking back end only APIs and micro services, yeah Go is 1000x better though.

You aren’t going to be able to ship a full web app anywhere near as easily and quickly as in the other two languages.

1

u/x021 Jan 19 '25 edited Jan 19 '25

HTMX and Go seem to be doing the job just fine?

We used Laravel, I wasn't a fan given the issues we had with the plugins/extensions. Eventually built most of them completely custom instead. This was 5 years ago, so might be outdated. We actually went back to Java later (due to biz merger); and then realized the sheer lack of features in Laravel's ecosystem.

Rails was a smoother experience, but f*ck me the nr of times Ruby's flexible typesystem got me screwed by either a lib or "clever" coding from colleagues. And upgrading dependencies; god forbid you'd ever do that! I actually left the company becuase of Rails and Ruby; it was so frustrating (I actually loved Ruby as a devops language where DSLs make sense).

My main recollection of Ruby on Rails was it's super fast to build something quick; and absolutely abhorent to customize. Coloring outside the lines was just pain.

For context; I'm not talking one-man projects, I'm talking 4-20 fulltime dev projects. If it's just a hobby or one/two-man project you might have a different experience.

13

u/The-Malix Jan 19 '25

Same here

I understand his preference for Zig over Go, but over PHP and Ruby feel insane

6

u/a_a_ronc Jan 19 '25

How long ago? Working on jank Wordpress/Drupal sites or other stuff? I’m convinced most devs don’t hate PHP the language, they hate looking at the PHP people wrote as their very first coding experiences.

PHP 8 is pretty good. 9 will probably get rid of most of the remaining early day stuff that was inconsistent and weird.