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points by egnehots 3 days ago | 0 comments

Truly the argument can be made either way.

If you code in Go, the code is more high level, prettier, simpler.

If you code in Rust, the code is more robust, efficient, faster.

Both are important for LLM, why can't we have a high level, simple language that is also robust, efficient and fast? =)

Efficient code means code with a large amount of embedded assumptions. Code that's more generic is almost always less efficient.

Go is about as far as you can "go" to the efficiency end without becoming Rust. It's a low-overhead language (like C) but with a GC that ensures memory safety. If you want to manage memory yourself and still prove safety it gets very complicated, as we see in Rust.

[–] satvikpendem 3 days ago

OCaml fits your bill. Super fast compile times and also very fast runtime.

[–] jimbokun 3 days ago

It always feels like OCaml is on the verge of becoming the perfect language.

Expressive and type safety of a functional language, without the odd semantics of Haskell, where laziness can make performance difficult to predict and purity can make simple things like IO difficult to understand.

Does it still lack easy to use concurrency primitives?

[–] konart 3 days ago

OCaml 5 + https://github.com/ocaml-multicore/eio

I' just starting OCaml, so can't really compare, but it seems a good progress there.

[–] andriy_koval 3 days ago

> Both are important for LLM, why can't we have a high level, simple language that is also robust, efficient and fast? =)

I think many variants from Rust can be stripped to make it simple, especially in type system, which is way more complicated than go.

[–] nonethewiser 3 days ago

I dont think we need simpler types for agentic coding though. We need compiler speed. I guess those are probably related to some degree though.

[–] andriy_koval 3 days ago

It depends if you are full vibe-coding mode or still try to understand your codebase.

LLM can generate very cryptic rust code.

[–] jimbob45 3 days ago

If I want simplicity and maintainability, I’d pick Kotlin over Go. If I want speed, I’m picking Rust over Go. Why would I ever pick Go? It’s the best at nothing.

[–] coldtea 3 days ago

It's surely better than Kotlin in simplicity and maintainability. It also doesn't tie you to the JVM.

[–] procaryote 3 days ago

What if you want a single language that's pretty fast while simple and maintainable?

[–] alexfortin 3 days ago

Recently I stumbled upon https://crystal-lang.org/ and I love it!

It's really great fun to build stuff in Crystal, I don't have anything prod-grade yet to say how it scores there but the community seems to be happy about that too.

[–] ksec 3 days ago

Crystal is slow to compile. There is a variant of Crystal that compiles a lot faster. But I forgot its name. Need to dig it up when I get back home.

[–] alexfortin 3 days ago

I agree, the compiler is slow but I don't mind much, or better, the fact that I find building maintainable programs much easier outweights that downside massively in my case.

[–] jimbob45 3 days ago

Then you pick C# which is both faster and simpler than Go.

[–] girvo 3 days ago

Simpler it definitely is not. Better, yes I would accept that. C# is complex though.

[–] metaltyphoon 3 days ago

I like C# but simpler? I don’t believe so.

[–] mfru 3 days ago

C# may be easier but it is not simpler than Go

[–] dankobgd 3 days ago

didn't that language have like 150 keywords 10 years ago, it probably has 500 keywords now

[–] TheChaplain 3 days ago

Goose?

[–] rTX5CMRXIfFG 3 days ago

Swift