Why Go?

https://github.com/microsoft/typescript-go/discussions/411

by mepian • 1 year ago

130 107 1 year ago

jerf• 1 year ago

This is posted in the context of the discussion ongoing at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43332830, elsewhere on the front page as I write this.

Note if you are a title-only-before-commenting reader that this is not a generalized apologia for Go, but specifically for the case of porting the Typescript compiler, so reciting the Litany Against Go in a general sense is not really on topic.

(The Litany, naturally, is:

    I must not Go.
    Go is the mind-killer.
    Go is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
    I will face Go.
    I will permit it to pass over me and Go through me.
    And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye 
    to see its path.
    Where the Go has Go'ed there will be nothing.
    Only I will remain.

)

metayrnc• 1 year ago

Go also offers excellent control of memory layout and allocation (both on an object and field level) without requiring that the entire codebase continually concern itself with memory management.

I guess this sheds a bit of light in to the why not rust debate.

davydm3• 1 year ago

yeah, the whole thought process (imo) makes a lot of sense; and I like that they experimented in a few languages first to see how it would fit

ayende• 1 year ago

C# has both of those capabilities and more The answer doesn't make sense

Thaxll• 1 year ago

When you code using regular OOP it's def not the case. Go struct memory layout is very straightforward.

wiseowise4• 1 year ago

So is Java.

dagw• 1 year ago

Two things that have brought up in interviews. They don't seem to believe that AOT compiled C# is mature enough and can give the best possible performance on all their supported platforms. Their current codebase consists of more or less pure functions acting on simple data structures and since they want the port to be as 1:1 as possible, idiomatic Go is closer to that style than idiomatic C#.

See this thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43332830 for much more discussion.

jillyboel5• 1 year ago

Requiring all typescript users to install the .net runtime will probably kill adoption, especially on linux build servers. It still requires custom microsoft repos, if they're even available for your distro, and is barely upstreamed.

For Go, you just run the binary without any bullshit. This can easily be wrapped in an npm package to keep the current experience (`npm install` and it works) on all platforms.

ijustlovemath• 1 year ago

c# also has a runtime you have to ship with any binaries

Kon-Peki• 1 year ago

I once was in charge of a legacy C codebase that passed around data files, including to customers all around the world. The “file format” was nothing more than a memory dump of the C data structures. Oh, and the customers were running this software on various architectures (x86, sparc - big endian, alpha, itanium) and these data files had to all be compatible.

Occasionally, we had to create new programs that would do various things and sit in the middle of this workflow - read the data files, write out new ones that the customers could use with no change to their installed software. Because the big bosses could never make up their minds, we at various times used C#, Go, Python, and even C.

They all work just fine in a production environment. Seriously, it’s fine to choose any of them. But C# stands out as having the ugliest and sketchiest code to deal with it. But it works just fine!

More telling though. I used this scenario in interview questions many times. How would you approach it with C#? 99% of the time I would get a blank stare, followed by “I don’t think it’s possible”. If you want developers that can maintain code that can do this, perhaps don’t choose C# :)

coolsunglasses• 1 year ago

I've written parsers and compilers in Rust. I used DAGs in a fairly standard way for stuff that needs it like references. I also work on a complicated VM with a custom memory allocation strategy professionally. Some of my other Rust projects include: a frontend web application that runs in the browser, a client library that has facades for Node, Python, and Ruby, and a Kafka Consumer that handles ~20 GiB/second of data throughput with relatively modest resourcing.

What he's saying here doesn't make any sense. It sounds like they threw in someone who doesn't know Rust at all, didn't bother to ask any questions, didn't reference any existing code, into trying to write custom memory management strategies and data structures and then bounced off the surface. That isn't how you do things in any language, it's bizarre and sounds like Rust was set up to fail. I wouldn't expect this scenario to succeed in any language on a non-trivial project like the TypeScript compiler.

What's even more bizarre is TypeScript actually has better support for ADTs than Golang (which is especially impactful when writing things like type checkers and compilers). I don't even _like_ TypeScript and I can see that. I've written 5-figures-ish of Golang for some work projects like a custom Terraform provider and it's horrific to model just a JSON schema in Golang's type system. Some of the problem is Hashicorp's terrible SDK but not all of it by any means.

Usually the problem is someone just not knowing how to write Rust. The modal subjective experience of writing Rust code as an experienced user is "Python with nice types, async, and executes fast." If you need to handle stuff with weird non-deterministic lifetimes you can use stuff like `slotmap`. If you need DAGs, use `petgraph`. I think pitching Rust as a "low-level systems language" might be misleading some people on how ~95% of Rust users are actually working in the language.

yomismoaqui• 1 year ago

Let's face it, Rust is better for some things (low level programming) than other (not so low level programming).

You pay a price in accidental complexity when using Rust and accordingly get some benefit for it (performance).

And hearing these kind of reasoning when picking from Anders Hejlsberg (C# & Typescript creator) makes me more of a fan of him.

davydm3• 1 year ago

I don't know why some people are losing their minds over it being in go... ok, so I kinda expected rust because that's what all the cool kids are doing - rewriting in rust - but I think go is a pretty good choice for a domain like this.

rjzzleep2• 1 year ago

Rust is a PITA. I started a few Rust projects as well, but it just doesn't vibe with me. I don't like the verbosenes of Go, but it's mostly consistent, and there are accepted best practices. Rust is like the Perl of system programming.

whimsicalism8• 1 year ago

Rust is like the Perl of system programming.

So not true. I'm hardly a Rust aficionado, but Rust is definitely a spiritual successor to C++, while Go is more of a successor to Java.

wewtyflakes• 1 year ago

In my experience, Rust has been a language that writes as terse and bloated at the same time; though it is perhaps my own skill issue. I tried hard to love the language but I ended up walking away.

exeldapp2• 1 year ago

Normally I don't think anyone would be losing their mind, but this is a Microsoft team creating a widely popular Microsoft product and they use a Google product (Go) instead of using another Microsoft product (C#) that is arguably competing with it. It strikes as odd why a Microsoft team isn't comfortable with/trusting a Microsoft product. I think it makes sense that some people are taking this in a way that maybe they shouldn't trust in C#'s future either.

davydm3• 1 year ago

yeah, i saw that inference too; but i think it's a silly one - it would be like those same people being upset that new windows core features aren't written in C# (and, we shouldn't forget the other targeting languages)

but i'm also a fan of languages, so my opinion may be screwy ;p

afavour3• 1 year ago

The key takeaways for me:

many languages would be suitable in a ground-up rewrite situation.
By far the most important aspect is that we need to keep the new codebase as compatible as possible, both in terms of semantics and in terms of code structure
languages that require fundamental rethinking of memory management, mutation, data structuring, polymorphism, laziness, etc., might be a better fit for a ground-up rewrite, but we're undertaking this more as a port

My initial thought was "why not Rust" and those passages do a pretty good job of answering the question, IMO.

manojlds2• 1 year ago

But not why not C#

rjzzleep2• 1 year ago

I'd blame MS for it. If they had played their cards differently early on, we would probably be living in a different world now.

afavour3• 1 year ago

It's a fair question! Go is certainly more widely used in web dev circles (e.g. esbuild) than C# is, that might go some way to answering the question.

I think folks want TypeScript to use C# because it's Microsoft, I'm glad they didn't just do that for corporate reasons. But I'm open to there being non-corporate reasons!

wiseowise4• 1 year ago

Why C#?

tptacek• 1 year ago

There's an answer for that on the thread: they wanted to get as close to native code as they could while retaining GC, and Go is "native-native" (if you will), while C# is bytecode-native.

interroboink• 1 year ago

See this comment on the chain: https://github.com/microsoft/typescript-go/discussions/411#d...

(and the comment that spawned it, which is essentially the same as yours but with some more specifics)

koakuma-chan2• 1 year ago

Why not Java

Redoubts2• 1 year ago

Why pull a Lattner?

manojlds2• 1 year ago

Makes no sense, when there is C#.

tiagod• 1 year ago

Care to explain? This decision involved the people who actually designed C# itself.

_benton2• 1 year ago

Seeing all the comments about Rust in that other discussion was kind of disappointing. I have a feeling if they chose Rust, go fans wouldn't be complaining about it not being written in Go.

ChocolateGod2• 1 year ago

I don't think so. I've seen some people have a superiority complex over Rust that isn't the case with Go.

"REWRITE EVERYTHING IN RUST" people.

koakuma-chan2• 1 year ago

A typescript compiler doesn't need an embedded async runtime.

hackyhacky• 1 year ago

It's not widely known, but the 90s rock band Pearl Jam answered this very question [1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzJu4r5vvo8

ChocolateGod2• 1 year ago

If people want this to be in <insert their flavour of the month language here> they should do it themselves rather than complaining.

nonethewiser• 1 year ago

Maybe a stupid question but...

With typescript 7 written in Go, am I able to download typescript 7 as an npm module in my package and use that? No, right? I have to have it installed on my system and maybe have a version manager to use different versions across projects. Or maybe it can be compiled to WA and published to npm?

inib• 1 year ago

It will continue to work from npm. See esbuild as an example.

mcintyre1994• 1 year ago

I don’t see why not. Esbuild is written in Go and installed with NPM: https://esbuild.github.io/getting-started/#install-esbuild

ClikeX3• 1 year ago

You can upload binaries to npm, so I don't see why you shouldn't be able to download it as a npm module?

RyanCavanaugh2• 1 year ago

(OP author here) Lots of people reading too much into the tea leaves here; this is just a matter of picking the best tool for this particular task, and our task (porting a JS codebase to the fastest available native target that still works in terms of not altering program structure as part of the port) is pretty unusual as far as things go

I would also recommend reading kdy1's observations when faced with the same task: https://kdy1.dev/2022-1-26-porting-tsc-to-go . The only caveat I'd add is that I can't tell where the 62x measurement in that post came from. Our own experiments doing Rust and Go implementations showed them within the margin of error, with certain phases being faster in one vs the other.

jasonthorsness2• 1 year ago

Would you say C# AOT could have been competitive in startup time and overall performance, and the decision came down to the other factors you've noted? I think everyone would have expected C# AOT to be the default choice so it might be nice to see some more concrete examples of where Go proved itself more suitable for your use-case.

RyanCavanaugh2• 1 year ago

C# AOT is quite strong and would be a great choice in a lot of contexts.

Go was just very, very strong on port-friendliness when coming from the TS codebase in particular. If you pull up both codebases side-by-side, it's hard to even tell which is which. C# is more class-oriented and the core JS checker uses no classes at all, so the porting story gets quite a bit more difficult there.

16bytes• 1 year ago

Since you wrote this it looks like Anders replied [1] to one of the threads.

I have to agree with the sentiment that is a success story that the team is allowed to use the best tool for the job, even if it suffers from "not built here".

This is really healthy and encouraging to see in these large OSS corporate-sponsored projects, so kudos to you and the team for making the pragmatic choice.

[1] https://github.com/microsoft/typescript-go/discussions/411#d...

nu11ptr• 1 year ago

I have written a lot of code in many languages, but most recently in Go and Rust. I had actually considered myself a Rust convert up until recently, and if you look at my comment history, you will find me calling out Go for being a poorly designed language on multiple occasions.

I have changed my mind.

Why? Well, I started writing Go again, so I had experience writing both Rust and Go within a close timeframe to each other. These are very different languages with very different strengths. I think choosing one over the other largely comes down to what you are writing. For deep, complex typed algo code esp. things that need to be very fast, I would likely still choose Rust, but Go really excels at writing infra code. Code that needs to be fast, but more importantly needs to be iterated quickly, and Go compiles MUCH faster than Rust.

Most of my objections to Go I find in the "programming language theory part of my brain". I am a language designer at heart, and by that, I mean I iterate on language designs and have a deep love for PLT. The issue I have found is that, while Rust is awesome in theory (and still one of my favorite languages), actually building things quickly is more satisfying to me, and I am finding I can build in Go about 2x the rate as in Rust. I didn't think this was the case until I actually started tracking my own iteration speed. Things like compile time DO matter, because you are always compiling at some level, even if just running tests. Also, every language feature is just a tiny bit of friction, and Go is so simple that friction is nearly non-existent.

Most of my Go language objectionss, such as nil pointers, lack of enums, multi return vs tuples are much less an issue in practice than they are in theory, and once you sit down and actually think on 'why' Go might have done what it did, it actually makes some sense. I had a few lightbulb moments I could expand on in a different post.

In summary, Go and Rust are very different languages. I really like both, but in different use cases. I am back to writing more Go than Rust, but I expect to write some of both going forward.

rowanG077• 1 year ago

That's interesting. I have some experience in go and rust. A bit more in go although that is also longer ago. And my experience was reverse from yours. Yes go is simpler but just the insane amount of time it took for me to read the existing codebase in go compared to an approx equivalent rust project was the most large difference for me. The code in rust is just so much faster to read in the large. The signal to noise ratio is much higher. Otoh go code is easier to read in the small but harder to read in the large.

I guess for small things I would prefer go.

_benton2• 1 year ago

I had a few lightbulb moments I could expand on in a different post.

I'd love to hear about them!

bnpxft• 1 year ago

If Go had sum types and expressive pattern matching I think it would be my favorite language. I'm so sick of writing "if err != nil", just give me a Result type.

If there was a version of Rust was garbage collected, I think it would be more popular.

I'd love TypeScript if it didn't inherit the foot guns of Javascript and didn't have the ever changing tool chain.

jasonthorsness2• 1 year ago

For everyone asking Why Not C#? I think it's fair, given Anders who designed both C# and TypeScript was the one who announced this on X and is involved, to take them at face value on things such as "Idiomatic Go strongly resembles the existing coding patterns of the TypeScript codebase, which makes this porting effort much more tractable." Maybe after doing a bunch of prototypes, like they said they did, it was just the obvious choice at the level of the code itself, and I think if that's where they focused their decision rubric instead of on other factors like NIH or the current hot thing it's a refreshing way of making a decision.

sepositus3• 1 year ago

It's hard to tell which camp is more angry: the C# developers stating Microsoft is ditching its own ecosystem or the Rust developers unwilling to accept anything in this category not being written in Rust.

From my understanding, all three options (Go, C#, and Rust) represent a significant speedup. The only legitimate concern I see is the one around WASM support, which is quite valid.

But at the end of the day, it seems like the team is making a decision that maximizes speed and deliverability, with the offset being that some cracks are now present (e.g. WASM). I can respect them for that choice.

metaltyphoon• 1 year ago

The only legitimate concern I see is the one around WASM support, which is quite valid

If this is also priority, wouldn't Rust be the right choice? I’m not sure Go and C#’s WASM story is that great.

sepositus3• 1 year ago

The problem is there are multiple competing priorities at play here. I'm sure the dev team is aware of the poor WASM support. Still, as stated in the OP, they seriously value the ability to efficiently rewrite their current code in a more performant language without drastically altering it. Obviously, to someone depending on WASM, the latter brings no value to them, so they can more easily criticize the dev team because they are simply ignoring that priority.

Hemospectrum• 1 year ago

It's hard to tell which camp is more angry: the C# developers stating Microsoft is ditching its own ecosystem or the Rust developers unwilling to accept anything in this category not being written in Rust.

Is it really? I must be reading the wrong comments somehow. I've seen lots of Rust people express only brief and mild surprise: "Wait what? Oh, okay, that makes sense. Carry on." None of them are taking this as a death knell for Rust.

Meanwhile, the C# camp is erupting in a crisis of faith because Anders Hejlsberg has eaten something other than his own dogfood. They are outright grieving over this announcement with much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

sepositus3• 1 year ago

Sorry, there was another HN thread where the Rust backlash was a bit more pronounced. Wasn't clear from my original comment.

aeturnum• 1 year ago

Languages that allow for a structurally similar codebase offer a significant boon for anyone making code changes because we can easily port changes between the two codebases.

From this I can understand why they did not go with, say, Rust - but there are other compiled languages with garbage collection that could have worked well. Why Go over Crystal? I imagine it's that the Go is the most mature ecostystem (i.e. the interop) but it feels like a missed opportunity.

osigurdson4• 1 year ago

Why not Rust? https://youtu.be/10qowKUW82U?t=769

Why not C#? https://youtu.be/10qowKUW82U?t=1155

amai• 1 year ago

tldr; it was easier to convert the existing codebase with all its quirks from Typescript to Go than to Rust or C#.

osigurdson4• 1 year ago

For a slightly longer tl;dr:

- Project is a port, code needs to behave identically to the javascript version - Cyclic data structures super hard in Rust - AOT in C# not mature enough

kaycey2022• 1 year ago

Why not rust? It only takes 5 years to compile the codebase. So much time for activities!

pragmatic• 1 year ago

I think if you looked at the typescript code base you’d understand.

It’s a mess!!!

As most functional projects are. There’s just data structures and code and good luck finding anything or trying to figure out why something is where it is.

Seriously go look at the code. It’s not like c#.

camdenreslink• 1 year ago

You can write C# in that style, it just won't be idiomatic.

slroger• 1 year ago

Great work, did you consider Java+GraalVM?

Why Go?

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