Is it time to plan a move to Go?

[John D. Bell]

On 11/04/2017 07:59 PM, Eric S. Raymond via devel wrote:
> Here's my big question about the next year of development:  should we
> be moving the codebase out of C to Go?
>
> I think the project is feasible and the potential gains are large, but
> I don't want to start anything without being sure our senior devs are
> happy with the idea.  This means everybody's concerns need to be heard
> well before any code is cut.
>
> ....
>
> Thoughts?

Not to be the grognard here, but trying to weigh in from the
(theoretical) customers' perspective.

Since we're trying to get adoption by big-site sysadmins, who are (or
tend to be) a technically conservative bunch, I'm concerned that they
will see code in a "brand-new" language as possibly too risky.  (Yes,
they nearly always install from vendor- or distro-supplied packages, so
binaries only.  But the implication of "you can always download and
build your own from source" means that the source language has _some_
weight in their considerations.)

I think some serious prototyping needs to be done in Go, but that, until
we get significant uptake, the released versions should be in a "tried
and true" language (_even_ with the security/reliability considerations.)


My $0.02 worth.


  - *John D. Bell*

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