Link Rodeo: Go Package Management and Boring Technology
• Erik L. Arneson
Here are a number of interesting topics for you to think about this week.
I’ve been learning the Go programming language recently, and in the process I’ve been having conversations about it with friends and colleagues. Go has a unique package management system that has already caused me a number of headaches. The recommended method for taking care of package dependencies is lacking, at best. Over at Nerdbucket, my buddy Nerdmaster has written a thoughtful piece about it.
While I’m talking about new technology, I’d also like to contradict myself by agreeing with Dan McKinley’s great piece, “Choose Boring Technology.” He argues that a project should be careful about adopting lots of new tools and technologies. It reminds me of a time recently when I was looking for a Node.js programmer, and one of the replies I got back was, “For us, Node.js is glue. Its ecosystem is still too young to support anything long-term. Libraries and packages move too fast to build a product that will need actual maintenance.” I’ve had the same feeling about many technologies I’ve wanted to try, such as Ocsigen for OCaml, which has a build system and API that is always several steps ahead of its documentation.
This post’s featured photo is courtesy of Flickr user MunicipioPinas.