Here is the take of Rob Pike, one of the creator of Go, on AI:
Fuck you people. Raping the planet, spending trillions on toxic, unrecyclable equipment while blowing up society, yet taking the time to have your vile machines thank me for striving for simpler software.
The thing is, I would say most software engineers get into software engineering because we like programming. It might be the case that using AIs shifts the work from writing code to reviewing code, but that is substantially less rewarding and enjoyable work. Capitalism kills the artisan, once again.
The thing is, I would say most software engineers get into software engineering because we like programming.
How confident are you of this? I'm sure it's true of the people on this site, but I often wonder if for every one of us there's a handful that got in to the profession mostly because it had decent pay and working conditions.
Or to phase it differently, there are many people who wanted to achieve something that required writing code in the past, but did it for various reasons. Now the requirement of writing code is removed, so different goals have clearer division.
Well, I can't speak for the psyche of every software engineer, but I think doing a job where you're not particularly interested in the work but like the pay and conditions is a path to dreary self-unfulfilment -- and until AIs, I'd say actually writing code was the staple work of the software engineer. (As the article points out, of course, it's more than just programming, but I'd say nobody really becomes an SE because they love reviewing code or team management or whatever.)
I can't help but feel this is written primarily to prove that Go is worthy of its budget by demonstrating it can shoot its own spunk in the "AI all the things" wankfest. Okay maybe not 100%, but certainly not 0% either.
Go compiles directly to a single, static binary with zero system dependencies
Huh, not even libc? That's actually pretty cool then.
As for the rest of the article, for me ADTs-and-patternmatching-esque languages are much more pleasant to read/maintain/refactor and I don't think a programming language should be made to please a model, if anything the reverse.
Also many are making the claim, on the socials at least, that their $fav_lang is an ideal LLM language(Lean, Rust, TypesScript, Elixir) that I'm not sure what to think of it.
I mean the article is corny af, but I think the core argument is legit. If generating code gets cheaper, then fast feedback, deterministic tooling, strong typing, simple semantics and easy verification become more valuable (even if less enjoyable). You can argue whether Go is uniquely good at those things, I think it is, but much of this thread seems to be arguing with AI existing rather than with what the article says. :)
At this point in time, shouldn't we acknowledge that the ideal language for LLMs is whatever language there's the most source code available for? My first guess would be Python, since I've seen LLMs generate Go code that looks for all the world like a nearly literal transcription of Python.
Experience also says that largest source code corpus wins. Try to get an LLM to generate code for the GPP general purpose preprocessor (https://github.com/logological/gpp/) and you'll see that in action. Asking for troff macros to do something fancy is also a way to test this.
This phenomenon suggests a test for AGI: specify a previously unimplemented language via a grammar (BNF or something). Can an "AI" write a quine in that language?
shouldn't we acknowledge that the ideal language for LLMs is whatever language there's the most source code available for?
More deterministic correctness from tooling makes more sense to me. With a non-deterministic system writing code, I want the strongest possible guarantees on the output.
jvoisin | 10 hours ago
Here is the take of Rob Pike, one of the creator of Go, on AI:
ngp | 2 hours ago
I think it's important to include the context of that email/post, which was that he was cold emailed by a bot with some inane "thank you" email.
cyberia | 9 hours ago
The thing is, I would say most software engineers get into software engineering because we like programming. It might be the case that using AIs shifts the work from writing code to reviewing code, but that is substantially less rewarding and enjoyable work. Capitalism kills the artisan, once again.
danlamanna | 7 hours ago
How confident are you of this? I'm sure it's true of the people on this site, but I often wonder if for every one of us there's a handful that got in to the profession mostly because it had decent pay and working conditions.
vetch | 6 hours ago
If the working conditions and pay didn't pull you into the field - it certainly has kept a lot of developers developing because of them.
viraptor | 4 hours ago
Or to phase it differently, there are many people who wanted to achieve something that required writing code in the past, but did it for various reasons. Now the requirement of writing code is removed, so different goals have clearer division.
cyberia | 2 hours ago
Well, I can't speak for the psyche of every software engineer, but I think doing a job where you're not particularly interested in the work but like the pay and conditions is a path to dreary self-unfulfilment -- and until AIs, I'd say actually writing code was the staple work of the software engineer. (As the article points out, of course, it's more than just programming, but I'd say nobody really becomes an SE because they love reviewing code or team management or whatever.)
jcalabro | 5 hours ago
Look, I love go, but this is just pure marketing drek
arp242 | 3 hours ago
I can't help but feel this is written primarily to prove that Go is worthy of its budget by demonstrating it can shoot its own spunk in the "AI all the things" wankfest. Okay maybe not 100%, but certainly not 0% either.
viraptor | 4 hours ago
Yeah, it's a lot of nicely polished text listing features. But once you look at benchmarks: it's not preferred https://arxiv.org/html/2503.17181v1 it's not the best https://arxiv.org/pdf/2505.13004 it's not even efficient https://martinalderson.com/posts/which-programming-languages-are-most-token-efficient/ (yes, some of those are old - feel free to list new ones with different outcomes)
zetashift | 7 hours ago
Huh, not even libc? That's actually pretty cool then.
As for the rest of the article, for me ADTs-and-patternmatching-esque languages are much more pleasant to read/maintain/refactor and I don't think a programming language should be made to please a model, if anything the reverse.
Also many are making the claim, on the socials at least, that their $fav_lang is an ideal LLM language(Lean, Rust, TypesScript, Elixir) that I'm not sure what to think of it.
yuck.
atilaneves | 6 hours ago
"Go is for Software Engineering" - unlike all those other silly programming languages? What?
mxey | 6 hours ago
https://go.dev/talks/2012/splash.article
benjajaja | 8 hours ago
The elephant in the room is of course Rust.
The general sentiment seems to be that a strong type system compensates the shortcuts AI tends to take.
gkoos | 3 hours ago
I mean the article is corny af, but I think the core argument is legit. If generating code gets cheaper, then fast feedback, deterministic tooling, strong typing, simple semantics and easy verification become more valuable (even if less enjoyable). You can argue whether Go is uniquely good at those things, I think it is, but much of this thread seems to be arguing with AI existing rather than with what the article says. :)
bediger4000 | 3 hours ago
At this point in time, shouldn't we acknowledge that the ideal language for LLMs is whatever language there's the most source code available for? My first guess would be Python, since I've seen LLMs generate Go code that looks for all the world like a nearly literal transcription of Python.
Experience also says that largest source code corpus wins. Try to get an LLM to generate code for the GPP general purpose preprocessor (https://github.com/logological/gpp/) and you'll see that in action. Asking for troff macros to do something fancy is also a way to test this.
This phenomenon suggests a test for AGI: specify a previously unimplemented language via a grammar (BNF or something). Can an "AI" write a quine in that language?
pyj | 2 hours ago
More deterministic correctness from tooling makes more sense to me. With a non-deterministic system writing code, I want the strongest possible guarantees on the output.