Letters to the Editor: Be wary of Go

By SD Times Editorial Board

September 28, 2012 — (Page 1 of 2)
Given Google's history of coming up with projects and then abandoning them, I would feel very wary about writing anything that might last a long time in Go (see “Go offers scalable alternative to C++”). I think C++11 with the right libraries offers much of the functionality of Go at the same time based on an ISO standard language.
Anonymous
United States

A most complicated logo change
Why was the Federation constantly redesigning its Starfleet uniforms? (This in response to “Zeichick’s Take: The new Microsoft logo.") I'll offer you a counter-example: Why did American car makers change their styling every year, while Porsche kept the same lines for years at a time? When asked about this, F.A. Porsche said, "Why wouldn't they? At their production volumes, they have to make new body dies after a year's production, so why wouldn't they update the styling? Porsche makes so few cars that the stamping dies remain serviceable for years, and they are expensive."

As for Star Fleet, did you ever see a factory? In that era, everything came from the Replicator. If you make everything one-off “publish to order” from a digital model, you can make changes on a whim. The old uniforms were recycled to atoms and remade in a new image. I expect even egalitarian Federations in the far future have their power struggles and egocentric stylists promoted to positions of power.

The US Army just went through a phase of spending billions on “new, stylish” camo uniforms that looked cool but performed dangerously badly in the field.

If you live in a world where logos are just bitmaps and signs created by CNC machining centers, it's a wonder logos do not change more often. You may recall that the Pac-Man Microsoft logo was in fact not the first. The first Microsoft logo I recall (from the C Version 3, MS-DOS and Windows 1 days) had horizontal lines through the “o”.

I've given up trying to understand anything Microsoft does.
R.K. Herzog
United States