Why we used (a lot of) Go at our Python Shop

Transcript

1. 7/9/2015 Why we used (a lot of) Go at our Python shop http://go-talks.appspot.com/github.com/meson10/golang-pune-meetup/golang-pune-meetup.slide#1 1/25 Why we used (a lot of) Go at our Python shop & Why it isn't your holy grail Piyush Verma, Software Consultant
2. 7/9/2015 Why we used (a lot of) Go at our Python shop http://go-talks.appspot.com/github.com/meson10/golang-pune-meetup/golang-pune-meetup.slide#1 2/25 Early years and Challenges
3. 7/9/2015 Why we used (a lot of) Go at our Python shop http://go-talks.appspot.com/github.com/meson10/golang-pune-meetup/golang-pune-meetup.slide#1 3/25 C++ experience (2007 - 2008) Started off as a C++ programmer, contributing to KDevelop4. I had fairly weak programming concepts & C++ was overwhelming. I would get stuff done, but then I had a real hard time. (If I look back I have no clue what & how I did it) When you have weak concepts, it's easy to write your own code; But takes ages to understand others' In my defence, the language had a huge contribution too. (Unreadable, namespaces, boost is unboost, STL is inconsistent & ...)
4. 7/9/2015 Why we used (a lot of) Go at our Python shop http://go-talks.appspot.com/github.com/meson10/golang-pune-meetup/golang-pune-meetup.slide#1 4/25 Found Python, Flourished
5. 7/9/2015 Why we used (a lot of) Go at our Python shop http://go-talks.appspot.com/github.com/meson10/golang-pune-meetup/golang-pune-meetup.slide#1 5/25 Salient Features (advantages?) (2007- 2011) Easy to pick up. First push to production in less than 15 days. Absolutely human readable code. Dynamically typed (could make my mistakes) Time to translate a thought to main.py is less than it took me to write this Slide. Memory management: It is Automagical. Decent Garbage Collector, abstracts the use of heap vs stack. Because its interpreted it allows development in interactive shells, for rocket speed prototyping.
6. 7/9/2015 Why we used (a lot of) Go at our Python shop http://go-talks.appspot.com/github.com/meson10/golang-pune-meetup/golang-pune-meetup.slide#1 6/25 Issues are directly proportional to your growth in Business.
7. 7/9/2015 Why we used (a lot of) Go at our Python shop http://go-talks.appspot.com/github.com/meson10/golang-pune-meetup/golang-pune-meetup.slide#1 7/25 Mid term challenges (2011-2012) As no. of requests went up, it demanded scaling. Conventional stack crashed twice at a big launch. Daily bugs reported by users. Unicode was an uphill challenge to handle, more so as team and codebase was growing. Limited QA budget worsened the woes. Limited budget also meant we aim at utilizing given resources to the fullest than just keep adding new servers. Server costs started touching $2500 per month. Shipping code updates would lead to complex deployments. Running different versions of our own software was proving tough.
8. 7/9/2015 Why we used (a lot of) Go at our Python shop http://go-talks.appspot.com/github.com/meson10/golang-pune-meetup/golang-pune-meetup.slide#1 8/25 Backed by experiences we started looking for alternatives.
9. 7/9/2015 Why we used (a lot of) Go at our Python shop http://go-talks.appspot.com/github.com/meson10/golang-pune-meetup/golang-pune-meetup.slide#1 9/25 Expectations (2012-) Should have a fairly low learning curve. Stability and community support is essential. As much as possible, should be a drop-in replacement. Strictly static typed. Speed of development should be as fast as python. Deployments and dependency management should be easier. Have inbuilt support for Concurrency. Should not fall apart while dealing with Unicodes. With all these considerations, language should be faster than what we were using already.
10. 7/9/2015 Why we used (a lot of) Go at our Python shop http://go-talks.appspot.com/github.com/meson10/golang-pune-meetup/golang-pune-meetup.slide#1 10/25 Choices Golang Haskell Scala Java Rust
11. 7/9/2015 Why we used (a lot of) Go at our Python shop http://go-talks.appspot.com/github.com/meson10/golang-pune-meetup/golang-pune-meetup.slide#1 11/25 Based on our choices and requirements, We picked Go.
12. 7/9/2015 Why we used (a lot of) Go at our Python shop http://go-talks.appspot.com/github.com/meson10/golang-pune-meetup/golang-pune-meetup.slide#1 12/25 Experiences with Go (2012-present) The team picked it up within a matter of two weeks. Authored Gottp (http://github.com/Simversity/gottp), a microservice framework that powered most of our backend services thereafter. Strong typing would not let developers compile bad code. Shipping source code is as easy as shipping binaries. Maintain different versions of the binary in a private S3. No more variations in dependencies in production environment. Didn't have to deal with virtualenvs or creating an environment. Unicode handled as-it-is. No more Emojis crashing the server. Monthly bills dropped to ~ $850 for the level of concurrency we could achieve with lesser hardware. Very Comprehensive standard library.
13. 7/9/2015 Why we used (a lot of) Go at our Python shop http://go-talks.appspot.com/github.com/meson10/golang-pune-meetup/golang-pune-meetup.slide#1 13/25 Goroutines, Channels & interfaces are salient and really smooth features of Golang. Very good inbuilt testing support with the Testing package
14. 7/9/2015 Why we used (a lot of) Go at our Python shop http://go-talks.appspot.com/github.com/meson10/golang-pune-meetup/golang-pune-meetup.slide#1 14/25 Contd... Quickly became the choice for: - C o m p l e x m i g r a t i o n s c r i p t s . - B a c k e n d s e r v e r s . - M i c r o s e r v i c e s . - D a t a b a s e O p l o g p a r s e r s .
15. 7/9/2015 Why we used (a lot of) Go at our Python shop http://go-talks.appspot.com/github.com/meson10/golang-pune-meetup/golang-pune-meetup.slide#1 15/25 If you do not read the FAQ exhaustively and compare it with what you need, you can hit these Surprises (2012-present)
16. 7/9/2015 Why we used (a lot of) Go at our Python shop http://go-talks.appspot.com/github.com/meson10/golang-pune-meetup/golang-pune-meetup.slide#1 16/25 Confusing type system Named Type is different from Unnamed Type. Variable of Named Type is assignable to variable of Unnamed Type, vice versa. Variable of different Named Type is not assignable to each other. t y p e M y I n t i n t t y p e M y S l i c e [ ] i n t While this is invalid v a r i i n t = 2 v a r i 2 M y I n t = 4 i = i 2 This is not c u s t o m : = m a k e ( [ ] i n t ) f u n c c h e c k S l i c e ( i n p u t M y S l i c e ) { . . . } c h e c k S l i c e ( c u s t o m )
17. 7/9/2015 Why we used (a lot of) Go at our Python shop http://go-talks.appspot.com/github.com/meson10/golang-pune-meetup/golang-pune-meetup.slide#1 17/25 Language extensibility Operators are not functions Inbuilt functions can never be extended, reused / / C a n n o t c r e a t e a c u s t o m i t e r a t o r c l a s s N e w I t e r : d e f _ _ i n i t _ _ ( s e l f ) : s e l f . n o d e s = [ ] d e f a p p e n d ( s e l f , v a l ) : s e l f . n o d e s . a p p e n d ( v a l ) d e f _ _ i t e r _ _ ( s e l f ) : f o r e l e m i n s e l f . n o d e s : y i e l d e l e m d e f _ _ a d d _ _ ( s e l f , i t e m ) : t e m p _ i t e r = N e w I t e r ( ) f o r e l e m i n s e l f : t e m p _ i t e r . a p p e n d ( e l e m ) f o r e l e m i n i t e m : t e m p _ i t e r . a p p e n d ( e l e m ) r e t u r n t e m p _ i t e r
18. 7/9/2015 Why we used (a lot of) Go at our Python shop http://go-talks.appspot.com/github.com/meson10/golang-pune-meetup/golang-pune-meetup.slide#1 18/25 OR this: t y p e M y S t r s t r i n g f u n c m a i n ( ) { v a r z s t r i n g = " O h ! " v a r x M y S t r = " h e l l o " f m t . P r i n t l n ( x + z ) } No parametric polymorphism [Generics] Surprising Casting / / V a l i d f u n c h e l l o ( ) i n t e r f a c e { } { r e t u r n 1 } / / I n v a l i d f u n c h e l l o _ a r r a y ( ) [ ] i n t e r f a c e { } { r e t u r n [ ] i n t { 1 , 2 , 3 } }
19. 7/9/2015 Why we used (a lot of) Go at our Python shop http://go-talks.appspot.com/github.com/meson10/golang-pune-meetup/golang-pune-meetup.slide#1 19/25 Rely on interface{} too much, Such implementations will still happen t y p e L i n k e d L i s t s t r u c t { v a l u e i n t e r f a c e { } / / M a k e t h i s a n i n t e r f a c e a g a i n a n d h a v e t o d o w n - c a s t . n e x t * L i n k e d L i s t } f u n c ( o l d N o d e * L i n k e d L i s t ) p r e p e n d ( v a l u e i n t e r f a c e { } ) * L i n k e d L i s t { r e t u r n & L i n k e d L i s t { v a l u e , o l d N o d e } } f u n c t a i l ( v a l u e i n t e r f a c e { } ) * L i n k e d L i s t { r e t u r n & L i n k e d L i s t { v a l u e , n i l } } f u n c t r a v e r s e ( l l * L i n k e d L i s t ) { i f l l = = n i l { r e t u r n } t r a v e r s e ( l l . n e x t ) } f u n c m a i n ( ) { n o d e 2 : = t a i l ( 5 ) . p r e p e n d ( " H e l l o " ) . p r e p e n d ( [ ] b y t e { 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 } ) t r a v e r s e ( n o d e 2 ) / / [ 1 2 3 4 ] H e l l o 5 }
20. 7/9/2015 Why we used (a lot of) Go at our Python shop http://go-talks.appspot.com/github.com/meson10/golang-pune-meetup/golang-pune-meetup.slide#1 20/25 No compount statements a = 1 b = 3 x = a i f a < b e l s e a + 1 Will have to be written like this a , b : = 1 , 3 c : = ( m a p [ b o o l ] i n t { t r u e : a , f a l s e : a + 1 } ) [ a < b ] There is no stack-only mode. Dependency management can be a HUGE problem. So often, we had codes breaking because the library author pushed an imcompatible master branch.
21. 7/9/2015 Why we used (a lot of) Go at our Python shop http://go-talks.appspot.com/github.com/meson10/golang-pune-meetup/golang-pune-meetup.slide#1 21/25 So wait, what's the Conclusion?
22. 7/9/2015 Why we used (a lot of) Go at our Python shop http://go-talks.appspot.com/github.com/meson10/golang-pune-meetup/golang-pune-meetup.slide#1 22/25 Deal with it, know what you want. You would see a lot of articles about Golang being bad or weak. The FAQ of the language answers most of why it does not support a feature. Know your requirements, understand the limitations or conventions, and if you go ahead with it deal with it. Yes, the language does not have generics and that can lead to verbose code writing or having to use lot of reflection or code generation. Well, we do that because we want to deal with those :-) There is always an explicit, verbose and simpler way around it, and coming from Python that definitely matches the *Zen of python*
23. 7/9/2015 Why we used (a lot of) Go at our Python shop http://go-talks.appspot.com/github.com/meson10/golang-pune-meetup/golang-pune-meetup.slide#1 23/25 In [1]: import this T h e Z e n o f P y t h o n , b y T i m P e t e r s B e a u t i f u l i s b e t t e r t h a n u g l y . E x p l i c i t i s b e t t e r t h a n i m p l i c i t . S i m p l e i s b e t t e r t h a n c o m p l e x . C o m p l e x i s b e t t e r t h a n c o m p l i c a t e d . F l a t i s b e t t e r t h a n n e s t e d . S p a r s e i s b e t t e r t h a n d e n s e . R e a d a b i l i t y c o u n t s . S p e c i a l c a s e s a r e n ' t s p e c i a l e n o u g h t o b r e a k t h e r u l e s . A l t h o u g h p r a c t i c a l i t y b e a t s p u r i t y . E r r o r s s h o u l d n e v e r p a s s s i l e n t l y . U n l e s s e x p l i c i t l y s i l e n c e d . I n t h e f a c e o f a m b i g u i t y , r e f u s e t h e t e m p t a t i o n t o g u e s s . T h e r e s h o u l d b e o n e - - a n d p r e f e r a b l y o n l y o n e - - o b v i o u s w a y t o d o i t . A l t h o u g h t h a t w a y m a y n o t b e o b v i o u s a t f i r s t u n l e s s y o u ' r e D u t c h . N o w i s b e t t e r t h a n n e v e r . A l t h o u g h n e v e r i s o f t e n b e t t e r t h a n * r i g h t * n o w . I f t h e i m p l e m e n t a t i o n i s h a r d t o e x p l a i n , i t ' s a b a d i d e a . I f t h e i m p l e m e n t a t i o n i s e a s y t o e x p l a i n , i t m a y b e a g o o d i d e a . N a m e s p a c e s a r e o n e h o n k i n g g r e a t i d e a - - l e t ' s d o m o r e o f t h o s e !
24. 7/9/2015 Why we used (a lot of) Go at our Python shop http://go-talks.appspot.com/github.com/meson10/golang-pune-meetup/golang-pune-meetup.slide#1 24/25 Thank you Piyush Verma, Software Consultant @meson10 (http://twitter.com/meson10) me@meson10.net (mailto:me@meson10.net)
25. 7/9/2015 Why we used (a lot of) Go at our Python shop http://go-talks.appspot.com/github.com/meson10/golang-pune-meetup/golang-pune-meetup.slide#1 25/25