Google App Engine for Go

http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/go/overview.html

by odovdor • 15 years ago

227 68 15 years ago

code.google.com

Kilimanjaro• 15 years ago

Great news! I'll start playing with it right away.

I won't drop Python for my day to day coding, but having Go as an option is good to see what cool toys we can build.

fortes• 15 years ago

Any advantage (performance? memory use?) for using Go vs. Python? Or is just programming language preference?

gecko3• 15 years ago

I've been enjoying using Go as a C replacement when I need more performance than Python, but don't actually need to use C. It's been fine for that purpose. I would note that they do keep changing the syntax on a fairly regular basis, the libraries are still young, and I do find the language oddly unexpressive in places compared to even C++ with boost. (E.g., no ternary operator, no list comprehensions, using the same word for all loop variants, and so on.) That said, if you're using it as a C replacement, rather than a Python replacement, I think those are fine trade-offs.

Detrus• 15 years ago

Pretty interesting. What do you think of the quote from this article http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2518609 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/05/google_go/print.html

"Google has people who administer apps and services, and they need to, say, write tools that say scrape a few thousand machines statuses and aggregate the data," he says. "Previously, these operations people would write these in Python, but they're finding that Go is much faster in terms of performance and time to actually write the code."

Clever marketing or could Google's problems actually be handled better by Go than Python, in time to code?

true_religion• 15 years ago

Have you looked into other Python performance solutions like Cython which lets you add type declarations to Python code, and compile it into a C/C++ module?

In my tests, it produces speedups on numerics that put it within spitting distance of hand-tuned C.

heyrhett• 15 years ago

My general feeling is that Go is kind of like a lighter Java. Go is compiled, but also optimized for fast compile times, and it should be faster than python. However, from wikipedia: "Of features found in C++ or Java, Go does not include type inheritance, generic programming, assertions, method overloading, or pointer arithmetic."

Ken Thompson is a co-creator, and the language came from Google. I think Google is just showing that they stand behind their language, and it does seem to hit a sweet spot for a lot of web apps. Although, I don't know too many web apps that need better performance than python.

uriel2• 15 years ago

> However, from wikipedia: "Of features found in C++ or Java, Go does not include type inheritance, generic programming, assertions, method overloading, or pointer arithmetic."

For many people (including me) the lack of all this "features" is a feature in itself. I certainly have not missed any of them.

jerf2• 15 years ago

"Although, I don't know too many web apps that need better performance than python."

Web apps aren't just CRUD anymore.

http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/benchmark.php?test=all...

If your server in Go is 10x faster than your Python server, which is not necessarily unreasonable, that's 10x less hardware expense you have, if your website is actually "doing something". That can add up.

supersillyus5• 15 years ago

Faster than Python, better memory use for many types of programs. Compared to Java, less memory use and (I assume) much less start-up time, since no VM is needed. Also, since you can use goroutines, it would seem like you'd be able to do concurrent requests without having to have a special async API like Java/Python have. Go seems like it'll be a pretty great fit for App Engine.

MatthewPhillips2• 15 years ago

goroutines run in a single OS thread. Same reason for blocking threading on Java. Said this restriction maybe lifted in the future but I wouldn't hold my breath on that.

EDIT: Clarification, on goroutines run in a single OS thread on AppEngine.

kingkilr2• 15 years ago

Faster than CPython maybe, last time someone did a benchmark of Go vs. Python webservers PyPy came out on top.

leon_4• 15 years ago

For me it's only preference at the moment. My Go code isn't that performance critical that I couldn't implement it with Python. But having not to put up with the whitespace/indentation hell of python is a great relief.

Though the Go ecosystem is nowhere near Python's.

enneff2• 15 years ago

The official blog post: http://blog.golang.org/2011/05/go-and-google-app-engine.html

And Hacker News thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2533000

kristianp• 15 years ago

According to the blog post, deployment to app engine will only be available initially to those who sign up as a trusted tester via this form: https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey...

mhansen• 15 years ago

Why is the thread [dead]?

MatthewPhillips2• 15 years ago

Can't wait to toss Eclipse into the trash!

forgotusername• 15 years ago

Can anyone confirm if this allows linking native libraries? From the looks of the "compiler", it seems it might be hacked to produce a binary statically linked against, say, SpiderMonkey.

Beyond coolness, it seems a waste of effort to tailor this release to Go, when similar effort might have been expended, e.g. to define a simple protocol talked over a UNIX fd that any static x86 binary could implement to integrate with App Engine.

enneff2• 15 years ago

There's a lot more than sandboxing to rolling a good App Engine SDK. A large amount of effort went into designing nice, idiomatic Go APIs for accessing the App Engine services.

wmf• 15 years ago

It looks like the answer is no. You upload your Go source code and App Engine compiles and runs it; you don't upload binaries.

jordinl• 15 years ago

What's the best way to get started with Google Go?

dchest3• 15 years ago

Start from the left column (Learning Go): http://golang.org/doc/docs.html and continue to the bottom.

Watch "Practical Go Programming": http://osdc.blip.tv/file/4432146/

Watch "Writing Go Packages": http://www.youtube.com/gocoding#p/u/0/jDWBJOXs_iI

Read language specification.

Edit: If you prefer books, here's a CC-licensed, still in development, book by Miek Gieben "Learning Go": http://www.miek.nl/files/go/ (grab the latest PDF; alternatively, here's Git repo: http://miek.nl/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=gobook.git;a=summary)

bgentry3• 15 years ago

It looks like this is still going to be limited to HTTP (port 80) web applications.

So you won't be able to run a process like Doozer that communicates with other ports/protocols.

EDIT: More details from the docs at http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/go/runtime.html

An App Engine application cannot:

-write to the filesystem. Applications must use the App Engine datastore for storing persistent data. Reading from the filesystem is allowed, and all application files uploaded with the application are available.

-open a socket or access another host directly. An application can use the App Engine URL fetch service to make HTTP and HTTPS requests to other hosts on ports 80 and 443, respectively.

bgentry3• 15 years ago

Why the downvote? This is a legitimate limitation of the App Engine platform, and for Go specifically it eliminates many of the common usecases.

dchest3• 15 years ago

With the announcement of backends (http://googleappengine.blogspot.com/2011/05/app-engine-150-r...), I suspect long-running processes will be available in Go in the future as well.

bgentry3• 15 years ago

Thanks for the info, didn't realize they launched this feature as well. I doubt it will take them long to bring it to Go.

streeter• 15 years ago

GvR mentioned today at Google I/O that the Go runtime was championed by another group within Google. Apparently, the same thing happened with the Java runtime before it was brought into the App Engine team. He expected the same thing to happen with the Go runtime. So one would expect new features to come to the Go runtime slightly after the other "first class" runtimes (Python and Java).

leon_4• 15 years ago

yeah, app engine is pretty limited in that regard. that's why my current go webapp (which needs to send sms and IM) won't run on the app engine. ec2 ahoi ...

wwkeyboard• 15 years ago

Nice of them to even mark the issue fixed!

http://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/detail?id=23...

chuhnk• 15 years ago

Go appears to be gain more and more traction. I wonder how long before someone else supports it on their platform.

arturadib• 15 years ago

It's going to be a tough sale for Google to convince people to adopt Go for their web apps when Node.js is taking over that scene. With Node I get the best of two worlds: high concurrency and speed -- presumably the top two selling points for using Go with web apps -- without having to teach myself yet another programming paradigm. Everyone and their mother knows some Javascript; good luck hiring help for your Go-based startup.

IMHO, Google could be riding a much bigger wave right now...

bjg2• 15 years ago

While I agree that go on appengine might not take off, in no way is node.js "taking over that scene". If by scene you mean the "web app" scene. Just because node.js articles are constantly blowing up hn, reddit does not necessarily correspond to real world deployments of node.js apps.

An admittedly hastily prepared google trends graph: http://www.google.com/trends?q=node.js%2C+python+django%2C+r...

I am a node fan, I subscribe to the node-dev list and have worked on a few applications my self. However I am in no way delusional about the current blog popularity vs actual projects deploying with it.

Also you state that you are able to gain the same concurrency and speed with node that you are with Go. May I ask how you achieve this? Go usually comparable to C code in terms of performance [1]. Go also has amazing concurrency tools for efficient communication between two concurrent goroutines, for example the channel interface[2]. To my knowledge their is no way to run concurrent node processes. You can launch multiple instances of the same program but their is no way to let them communicate without sending data over a socket. You can of course use a reverse proxy to present a single entry point in which multiple node backends can take requests. However you can not claim this as concurrency in the same sense that is available with go.

[1] http://golang.org/doc/go_faq.html#Performance

[2] http://golang.org/doc/effective_go.html#concurrency

robfig2• 15 years ago

But with Go can you write your client code and your server code in the same language?

rgbrgb2• 15 years ago

Go looks really nice and I'd really like to learn it especially if I can make a web app or something with it this summer.

Is there something comparable to npm or pip for go? I've seen a few go micro web frameworks but I'd really like to see a list of things like database adapters and the like which have been produced so far. The thing I find amazing about node is just how many great modules have been put out in it's short lifespan (https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/modules). I suppose Go is a brand new language though.

Thanks!

stephth• 15 years ago

With Node I get the best of two worlds: high concurrency and speed

With Node you still need to write in an event-based style, which is something devs often complain about working with Node.js.

"With goroutines and channels, you can say 'I'm going to send a message to another goroutine or wait for a message from another goroutine', but you don't have to actually leave the function you're in to do that," Gerrand says. "That lets you write asynchronous code in a synchronous style. As people, we're much better suited to writing about things in a synchronous style."

from http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/05/google_go/page4.html

jerf2• 15 years ago

It's going beyond cute and getting into downright tedious that the Node.js crew think they have some sort of unique lock on concurrency and speed, when instead they are late to the party with an inferior implementation. This meme needs to die. I'd take Go in a heartbeat over Node.js for anything remotely non-trivial.

strlen• 15 years ago

> good luck hiring help for your Go-based startup.

If you're unable or unwilling to become fluent in a new language (especially Go, which isn't that difficult to learn), there is no way I'd hire you to program in any language.

Programming ability is multi-dimensional: not everyone is a top-notch as programming language geek AND an algorist AND an architect/designer AND systems hacker. Nonetheless, a programmer should have some aptitude in each of these areas, even if they shine particularly in only one.

A more eloquent summary of this thesis can be found at:

https://twitter.com/#!/moonpolysoft/status/19553333429

euroclydon• 15 years ago

Go's a System language. Doesn't that mean it's more suitable for writing a web server, database, driver or OS than as a web site scripting language?

I mean, no one would write System code in PHP, and it's rare to see web sites written in C, so why write a website in Go?

leon_4• 15 years ago

Go turned out to be a pretty nice general purpose language. You got garbage collection, sane native string handling, native maps and lists. Mix that with static typing and you got a pretty nice language that enables fast and sane web development.

lars5122• 15 years ago

Having done a lot of CJK development, I felt that Go's unicode strings were pretty kludgey last time I looked. Go's strings are all utf8, so unless you're working in its ASCII subset alone, you have to manually iterate over multi-byte runes to get the unicode codepoints out. That's really not what I'd call a friendly unicode handling comparable to scripting languages, or even Java.

Please correct if things have changed. I haven't revisited Go for a little while now, and would be very interested as to any updates to its unicode handling.

chrisfarms• 15 years ago

State my assumptions: GAE allows you to deploy multiple versions of your app and access the same datastore. Go should significantly out perform Python for certain CPU intensive tasks.

...

If Backends are available at versioned URLs too (and I suspect they do/willdo) then there might be nice opportunities to build little Go Backends to do heavy lifting within your main Python applications. Sounds cool.

xtfunlp• 15 years ago

It's about time! i always wondered why google left out Go! for the app engine last time i was there, since it's their language and stuff. Tough i guess it's ruby next? yeah probably not...

zmmmmm• 15 years ago

This seems like a pretty big step to me: so far Go has seemed like a kind of geeky side project of Google's. But here they are promoting it into one of their production services.

Makes me wonder if they are preparing to slowly edge Java out the door and replace it with something equally performant but not burdened by a hostile owner.

rkalla• 15 years ago

I think you nailed it. Consider they picked up Gosling for r&d I don't put championing their own future platform for all devices (you know Go is going to Android as part of the NDK or something by Android 4).

Isn't this what Sun basically did with Java? I don't know the incumbent they were trying to edge out or if it was just a "look at our cool tech" play.

Go seems like a C-esque version of python/ruby/java to me. A lot of very slick things in there. Lots of room to grow and a lot of community excitement.

Google App Engine for Go

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