Is anyone taking part in the upcoming AOC 2025?
What language will you be using.

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Is anyone taking part in the upcoming AOC 2025?
What language will you be using.

If I can find the time to participate, it will probably be Go.

One year, I did GWBASIC on my vintage systems. I got pretty far before the exercises exceeded the capabilities of BASIC.

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Re: Re: Advent of Code 2025
By: Dr. What to Mojo on Wed Nov 26 2025 07:04 am

If I can find the time to participate, it will probably be Go.

What's the appeal of Go? A while back, a dude from the local makerspace got REALLY into it and was just golang this and golang that.. I tried it out, it was slow. I've been trying it here and there since then, it's still slow. It's just like Java where you have to load a giant interpreter to run your code. Unless maybe I missed something about compiling to a faster executable... but every public project written in Go that I try loads just as slow as I expect it to.. and I'm pretty sure requires more RAM/resources than projects written in other languages.

I haven't tried Rust yet myself, but I noticed a big uptick in its use and then a sudden drop in popularity. Is that all politics-based? Did some Rust developer get cancelled for misgendering someone?

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phigan wrote to Dr. What <=-

What's the appeal of Go?

Clean language written by people who knew what they were doing (Ken Thompson and Rob Pike and others).

A while back, a dude from the local makerspace
got REALLY into it and was just golang this and golang that..

Us geeks tend to suffer from neophilia. "Oooo bright shiny new language! It must be great!"

I like to try things out, but if it doesn't fit my needs, I just drop it for something that does.

I tried
it out, it was slow. I've been trying it here and there since then,
it's still slow. It's just like Java where you have to load a giant interpreter to run your code. Unless maybe I missed something about compiling to a faster executable...

Ya, you missed something.

When learning Go, it's usually change code, compile, run, see what happens, then repeat.

The build times for Go are actualy pretty impressive compared to other tool chains. That was one of the big things that the inventors of Go wanted to fix.
For work, our code base takes about 5 minutes to compile. Add another 30 minutes if you want to run all the Unit Tests. Go would probably cut that down to 1/5 the time.

But back to the question of speed...

When you are "done" with your program, instead of doing

go run ./

You do

go build ./

the result is a native executable with all the speed that entails.

I haven't tried Rust yet myself, but I noticed a big uptick in its use
and then a sudden drop in popularity. Is that all politics-based? Did
some Rust developer get cancelled for misgendering someone?

Rust showed a lot of promise. I tried it out for a bit, but as Brian Kernighan complained, it changed so much that it was impossible to really do much in "the real world" with it.

Now there's nothing wrong with that. But it means that Rust isn't ready for Prime Time yet and it's only a matter of time before all the kinks are worked out, etc. The Rust compiler still has problems - fewer each day, but let's face it, it's not as proven as C. But time will fix that.

But then politics moved in. The Rusties declared that any program written in Rust was perfect - which just shows you how inexperienced they are. Then Woke distros like Ubuntu announced that they will replace coreutils with Rust alternatives - which are not feature complete and buggy.

Now, rewriting the coreutils in Rust isn't a bad idea. That would be a wonderful test for Rust and would show where they are deficient. But, no, they pushed the Rust rewrites as production ready and it failed horribly.

Then we have the latest Cloudflare outage - caused by a bug in a "bugproof" Rust program.

Rust isn't ready for production yet. Anyone with experience would see that. So the push for Rust is because they are pushing an agenda. And that agenda has nothing to do with what they claim.

As a result, Rust has become toxic. I won't touch it with a 50' pole now like many developers. Which is a shame because it had some really good ideas in it.


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Re: Re: Advent of Code 2025
By: Dr. What to phigan on Thu Nov 27 2025 08:21 am

A while back, a dude from the local makerspace got REALLY into it and was
just golang this and golang that..

Us geeks tend to suffer from neophilia. "Oooo bright shiny new language! It must be great!"

Sometimes I feel that way, but I also sometimes feel like if a tool works well, I might keep using it if a task seems appropriate for it. Also, looking at various technologies for things, sometimes it seems like there's a different "language of the month" for a while, and a few are in rotation for some types of projects. I've seen that mainly for web development - Early on, there were things like JSP, PHP, etc., and then for a little while, it seemed Ruby On Rails was popular, then Django with Python, and ASP.NET (and later, Microsoft Blazor), etc.. All these different ways to build web software projects, and it all seems like whatever the company, group, or single developer prefers to use. I'm not sure if any of those is really much better than the others.

Nightfox

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On Wed, 26 Nov 2025 07:04:00 +0000
"Dr. What" (VERT/CABANABR)
<VERT/CABANABR!Dr..What@overfit.retrievo.xyz> wrote:

Is anyone taking part in the upcoming AOC 2025?
What language will you be using.

If I can find the time to participate, it will probably be Go.

One year, I did GWBASIC on my vintage systems. I got pretty far
before the exercises exceeded the capabilities of BASIC.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Windows/32)
* Origin: bbs.CabanaBar.net:11123

Wozarts Bowzarts. I will have to try this. I did Go the first time I
tried my hand at it, this year I will try it with python.

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On Wed, 26 Nov 2025 05:36:33 -0700
"phigan" (VERT/TACOPRON) <VERT/TACOPRON!phigan@overfit.retrievo.xyz>
wrote:

Re: Re: Advent of Code 2025
By: Dr. What to Mojo on Wed Nov 26 2025 07:04 am

If I can find the time to participate, it will probably be Go.

What's the appeal of Go? A while back, a dude from the local
makerspace got REALLY into it and was just golang this and golang
that.. I tried it out, it was slow. I've been trying it here and
there since then, it's still slow. It's just like Java where you have
to load a giant interpreter to run your code. Unless maybe I missed
something about compiling to a faster executable... but every public
project written in Go that I try loads just as slow as I expect it
to.. and I'm pretty sure requires more RAM/resources than projects
written in other languages.

I haven't tried Rust yet myself, but I noticed a big uptick in its
use and then a sudden drop in popularity. Is that all politics-based?
Did some Rust developer get cancelled for misgendering someone?

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TACOPRONTO.bbs.io

Yep what the Doctor said. I cannot recall any huge java like runtime
needed it compiled down to a native binary that was small and fast.
The appeal for me was using it for servers that did not need an ngix
referse proxy in front like nodejs.
I tried AOC with rust as well, liked it but never had a use case for it
in the my real world that Go could not handle.

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Re: Re: Advent of Code 2025
By: Dr. What to phigan on Thu Nov 27 2025 08:21 am

go build ./

Yup, that's the part I was missing.

Thanks for that and the Rust info. That's sort of what I was expecting.

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Nightfox wrote to Dr. What <=-

Sometimes I feel that way, but I also sometimes feel like if a tool
works well, I might keep using it if a task seems appropriate for it.

Which is how things should work. People try new stuff. New stuff that works stays around. New stuff that doesn't work dies the death it deserves.

Also, looking at various technologies for things, sometimes it seems
like there's a different "language of the month" for a while, and a few are in rotation for some types of projects.

Programmers, in general, write stuff that "scratches their itch". Sometimes other developers have the same itch, so they use other's tools.

No programming language was ever the be-all, end-all language for every type of task. But that doesn't stop programmers from trying.

I'm not sure if any of those is really much better than the
others.

In general, no. That's why COBOL and FORTRAN are still around and still in development.

But all languages have limitations and warts. When developers start hitting those limitations, they start looking at other tools to go past those limitations and fix those warts.

In the case of Go, developers were tired of long build times and shared memory problems in concurrent tasks. So they built a language that solved those problems.

But even when a language fails to reach critical mass, some of the ideas in that language may make it into the next "new shiny language".


... To err is human, to forgive is against my policy
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Re: Re: Advent of Code 2025
By: Dr. What to phigan on Thu Nov 27 2025 08:21 am

But then politics moved in. The Rusties declared that any program written i Rust was perfect - which just shows you how inexperienced they are. Then Wo distros like Ubuntu announced that they will replace coreutils with Rust alternatives - which are not feature complete and buggy.

Now, rewriting the coreutils in Rust isn't a bad idea. That would be a wonderful test for Rust and would show where they are deficient. But, no, t pushed the Rust rewrites as production ready and it failed horribly.

Then we have the latest Cloudflare outage - caused by a bug in a "bugproof" Rust program.

Rust isn't ready for production yet. Anyone with experience would see that. So the push for Rust is because they are pushing an agenda. And that agenda has nothing to do with what they claim.

As a result, Rust has become toxic. I won't touch it with a 50' pole now li many developers. Which is a shame because it had some really good ideas in

I don't trust Rust, because it seems to be pushed by evangelists, and one would be wise to be wary of making decisions based on evangeslists.

Lunduke thinks that Rust may be in part pushed in order for Wokies to jockey themselves into power. If everything is written in Rust then you must abide by their standards to contribute, etc, then there is the who threat to Free Software. I think he has a point.

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Re: Re: Advent of Code 2025
By: Boraxman to Dr. What on Sat Nov 29 2025 10:58 pm

Lunduke thinks that Rust may be in part pushed in order for Wokies
to jockey themselves into power. If everything is written in Rust

do you mean bryan lunduke?
i hate that guy. total d-bag.
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Re: Re: Advent of Code 2025
By: Boraxman to Dr. What on Sat Nov 29 2025 10:58 pm

I don't trust Rust, because it seems to be pushed by evangelists, and one would be wise to be wary of making decisions based on evangeslists.

What do you think of Rust having been used in parts of the Linux kernel code now?

Nightfox

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