I'm really looking forward to SIMD becoming standard in Go. It might sound very niche, however SIMD intrinsics (which is different from how they are available now, which is via non-inlinable assembly) allow to generate similar vector code to C intrinsics, with very little in terms of overhead due to bounds checking, etc. This allows to write programs that are highly optimised for modern CPU and get maybe 80% of performance compared to the same variant in C. This is much better than the current state where C typically outperforms Go by at least 2x/3x, and SIMD typically allows you to get 10x or more speedup already, which gives UNLIMITED POWER to Go when CPU performance is a bottleneck
I’m leaving JSONv2 enabled and writing my JSON code to use that API directly.
From what I understand, it’s not default because there are performance regressions in some edge cases. But the typical performance is much better and the API is also much better.
To anyone writing new code that does anything with JSON—turn it on. Use it. I think it will be on by default soon enough anyway (1.27).
I find the arena experiment very interesting. If done right, whole programs can be structured as as a set of arenas. I've read some things on arenas here such as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37670740
Once allocators in general click, memory management in C becomes a total breeze.
Combined with typed fat pointers (slices and strings), typed hashmaps and stack-trace-assertions, C in general becomes quite nice. The rest is compiler flags.
Go solves this by being a better language out of the box, but with the Wirthian aspects removed they feel very similar. Perhaps not so surprising.
I am a low-level zig guy right now too. I have been around for a long time, and it’s funny to see arenas come back into vogue as a solution to nearly everything.
Arenas are great for avoiding allocations per tick/request/frame/layer. No symmetric free() to bracket lifetimes! They have a purpose, and we always knew that.
But by definition, your program is over-allocating as a tradeoff. Makes a ton of sense in certain use cases. However, we didn’t invent garbage collection and borrow-checking and realloc() just to publish papers ;)
Half of my time programming zig is spent considering allocation strategies. That’s a feature. “Where are the bytes?”
I wonder if they can solve the "ecosystem fracture" issue by borrowing the bubble concept from e.g. testing/synctest. The way the synctest API works is by creating a "bubble" around the test harness and the code under test such that the standard library's time package behaves differently, but only for the code running in the bubble.
So, maybe we could also have allocator bubbles, where code running inside the bubble is just as allocator-naive as any other Go code, but when it allocates (make/new/pointer escape), it uses the bubble's allocator instead of the default one.
The big problem I can think of, though, which doesn't apply to time bubbles, would be that pointers drawn from that allocator might escape the bubble (e.g. by assigning them to a longer-lived struct field). It's possibly something that can be detected by the runtime, but because the API is non-invasive by design, it's not something that will be apparent to the programmer when looking at the code.
It depends. I read JEPs quite often as part of my job. They are nice as a sum up of the intent behind the feature but they kind of hide the discussion and commits. Also one Java feature may encompass multiple JEPs.
Go‘s github discussions on the other hand, give me live-view of the latest state of the experiment. I find both useful and don‘t prefer either.
Hm, that's interesting; chrome://flags does seem to be titled "Experiments"... After, of course, you type "flags" into the address bar to get there. I guess I can see a distinction there, but it's pretty subtle.
This is Go (golang). It’s not even the same language used in the development of Chrome.
And the reason I make the distinction between feature flags and this is because some of the “experiments” discussed in the article are new packages / modules. So you’re not changing compiler behaviour via a flag or env var. You’re just importing a new package that isn’t yet considered stable.
I think the way Google handles flags/experiments in one project (Chrome) is very relevant to interpreting the language around how they handle flags/experiments in another project (Go).
And I'm pretty sure that their example is that importing "encoding/json/v2" doesn't work until you tell the compiler to enable it via environment variable.
CUE, originally starting as a fork of Go, has the experiments capability too and even extended it to per-file scoping. This makes trying out changes like `try { a: b?.c }` in isolation really nice
Go remains my favorite language for the tooling alone (while not forgetting about so many other great features)
From what I understand, it’s not default because there are performance regressions in some edge cases. But the typical performance is much better and the API is also much better.
To anyone writing new code that does anything with JSON—turn it on. Use it. I think it will be on by default soon enough anyway (1.27).
I want to learn Go.
If an oldie like me can learn go well so can you
I am thinking of making a CLI scoundrel card game.
Combined with typed fat pointers (slices and strings), typed hashmaps and stack-trace-assertions, C in general becomes quite nice. The rest is compiler flags.
Go solves this by being a better language out of the box, but with the Wirthian aspects removed they feel very similar. Perhaps not so surprising.
Arenas are great for avoiding allocations per tick/request/frame/layer. No symmetric free() to bracket lifetimes! They have a purpose, and we always knew that.
But by definition, your program is over-allocating as a tradeoff. Makes a ton of sense in certain use cases. However, we didn’t invent garbage collection and borrow-checking and realloc() just to publish papers ;)
Half of my time programming zig is spent considering allocation strategies. That’s a feature. “Where are the bytes?”
So, maybe we could also have allocator bubbles, where code running inside the bubble is just as allocator-naive as any other Go code, but when it allocates (make/new/pointer escape), it uses the bubble's allocator instead of the default one.
The big problem I can think of, though, which doesn't apply to time bubbles, would be that pointers drawn from that allocator might escape the bubble (e.g. by assigning them to a longer-lived struct field). It's possibly something that can be detected by the runtime, but because the API is non-invasive by design, it's not something that will be apparent to the programmer when looking at the code.
Go‘s github discussions on the other hand, give me live-view of the latest state of the experiment. I find both useful and don‘t prefer either.
This is Go (golang). It’s not even the same language used in the development of Chrome.
And the reason I make the distinction between feature flags and this is because some of the “experiments” discussed in the article are new packages / modules. So you’re not changing compiler behaviour via a flag or env var. You’re just importing a new package that isn’t yet considered stable.
And I'm pretty sure that their example is that importing "encoding/json/v2" doesn't work until you tell the compiler to enable it via environment variable.
I assume you’ve got experience in the subject you’ve got an opinion on?
Go remains my favorite language for the tooling alone (while not forgetting about so many other great features)