Gophers Say! GopherCon EU Athens 2024

Hello, and welcome to Go Time. I’m Mat Ryer. Today we’re playing Gophers Say live from GopherCon EU, all the way in Athens, Greece. Give it up, everybody. [applause]

Okay, so we’re gonna play Gophers Say. This is a game show where we’ve asked lots of gophers what they think of certain questions, and you have to guess the answers. So this isn’t about right or wrong, this is about how those people answered the question. So that’s important to say.

At the start of each round, two team members will go head to head to see who gets control of the board. And then that team will go on to guess what are the words are, and you’ll take it in terms… But you’re not allowed to confer. You have to just do it yourself individually at that point. And then if you answer the question correctly, you’ll hear this sound. [win alert] And you will then win as many points as how many people answered that question. If though you get the question wrong, you might hear this sound. [fail alert] And that means you’ll lose a life. Now, you have three lives in each round. If you lose all three lives, the other team then get a chance to steal. And they only have to get one of the answers correct in order to get all the points. So you don’t really want that to happen, if I’m honest. When you’re doing a steal, you are allowed to confer, and since this is a podcast, we ask you to do that into the microphone. But otherwise, you’re not allowed to confer with each other, you’re not allowed to chat about it. I think that’s basically it. We’re ready to get going. Let’s play Gophers Say.

Okay, Team zero over here. We have Wiktor, Diana and Grzeg. Wiktor, tell us, what’s your name, and where are you from.

My name is Wiktor, I’m from Poland…

Nice.

Currently, I’m studying in Amsterdam, Vrije University of Amsterdam. I’m studying AI. And from this point, I’m first time being recorded to any podcast, so I have to greet my family, greet my mother, my two brothers and my sister, and my best friends… And yeah, that’s it.

That’s enough, Wiktor. Thank you very much. We also have Diana.

Hi, my name is Diana. I am Ukrainian, but I live in France, and I work at Datadog, in the application performance monitoring. And I’ll make it short.

Thank you. Diana, everybody. [applause] We also have Grzeg. Grzeg, what’s your name and where do you come from?

Indeed, you have correctly pronounce my name.

Yes!

I come from Poland, and I work in the best company in Norway called Proceed AS.

Oh, nice. Not AF? Okay, you can keep that. Okay, and in team one we have Val. Val, what’s your name and where do you come from?

Yeah, so I’m Valentin, actually. I come from Poland, but I’m originally from the Belarus, and I live in Poland for the last decade or so. I’ve worked with Grzeg, hopefully in the future too, and… Yeah, I’m a senior Golang developer. Yeah, I guess it’s enough.

Thank you, Val. Valentin. And we also have Andrii.

Thank you for writing my name correctly.

Pleasure.

I’m Andrii, I’m also from Ukraine, I’m living in Berlin, and that’s it about me.

Okay. Well, great. Thank you. Great to have you, Andrii. And finally, Llewellyn.

Hi. My name is Llewellyn. I’m from South Africa, but I live in Abu Dhabi in the UAE, and I work for Saab Limited. Actually, I have a background in machine learning, and only recently started working in Go.

Okay, welcome. Right, so to decide who’s going to get control of this board, we are going to go with Wiktor and Val. You have to take a guess… The question is “What’s your favorite non-Go programming language? Wiktor, let’s have your guess first. What’s your favorite non-Go programming language? What did gophers say?

JavaScript.

JavaScript. Gophers say? [win alert] Yes, JavaScript is on there. It’s at number three, which gets you eight points. Eight people said that. So if you now beat this answer correctly, you will get control of the board. So what’s your guess?

Yeah, I wanted to just say Rust.

[00:06:05.18] Rust. Gophers say? [win alert] Yes, it’s on there, but it’s in the final position. Only five people said it. That means Team Zero gets control of the board. Diana, it’s your turn next to have a guess. What’s your favorite non-Go programming language? What did they say?

Python.

Python. Did they? Gophers say… [win alert] Yes. And that was the top answer. 22 people said that, which gets you 22 lovely points. Okay. Grzeg.

I will go for Ruby.

Ruby. Let’s see. Did gophers say that their favorite non-Go programming language was Ruby? Gophers say… [fail alert] No, they didn’t, I’m afraid. But don’t worry, you still have two lives. Wiktor, we circle back around to you. Sort of a round robin load balancer thing going on here.

I have to think. There are not as many programming languages…

Any programming language you like.

Let’s go with Java.

Java. Gophers say… [win alert] Yes, that was our second answer. 12 people said Java. Congratulations! Teams zero wins. 47 points. Nice stuff. Okay, now we’re gonna go to round two. By the way, in the last answer, someone did say Go… [laughter] Which was weird. And another person just gave someone’s name. Thomas Did you – I don’t know, he may not be here. Okay, round two. The question is, what’s the first go func that comes to your mind? What’s the first Go Function that comes to your mind? Diana, we’re gonna get your answer first, and then Andrii to see who gets control of the board. Diana?

fmt.Println, or something.

Oh, fmt.Println. Okay. Gophers say? [win alert] Yes, it’s on there. Oh, what a guess! That’s the second position. 12 people said that. So Andrii, you have to now try and get that top answer.

main.

main. Gophers say… [win alert] Yes, and it is the top answer. 25 people said main. That means team one, you have control of the board. Llwellyn, we’re going to go to you next.

panic.

panic. Let’s see. Gophers say… [win alert] Yes, they did. Third position. 11 people said that. Okay. Val, what do we think? What’s the first go func that comes to mind?

func.

func. Hey, not a bad guess. Let’s see. Gophers say… [fail alert] No, I’m afraid not, and you lose a life. But don’t worry, you’ve got two other lives. Andrii, what do you reckon?

I never go users and main, so I don’t know, to be honest… Maybe init.

Okay, init. Gophers say? [fail alert] No. It doesn’t come to mind first for many people. You lose a lot of life, but don’t worry, you’ve still got another life. Llewellyn?

String?

String.

The method.

Yeah, okay. Let’s see. Let’s see, like I said, it’s not about right or wrong. Let’s see what gophers say. Did they say string? [fail alert] No, they didn’t, I’m afraid. That means you lose three lives. So now there’s 48 points on the board to steal. You’re allowed to confer; into the microphone, please. If you get one of these correct, you will steal these points.

I think we can risk going with some log info or log debug.

If it’s all of the survey, I can also say the answers I’ve put in. [laughter]

But they might not be top, you know?

Yeah, it is the top answers.

We could go with blogging. For me, the first thing that comes to my mind it’s the make function, when you use it to create buffers. But yeah, if you’re on logging, let’s go with logging.

What do you think? Should we go with log info?

Log info.

[00:09:58.00] Log info. Let’s see - to steal least points, is log info on the board? Gophers say… [fail alert] No, I’m afraid not. So team one wins those points. Congratulations team one. [applause]

So in top position we had main. 25 people said that. Then fmt.Println was in second position, with 12 people. Panic was in number three with 11 people. Number four was… Make. Eight people said that. And number five, fmt.Printf was in there, that five people also said.

Okay… This next question is - we asked people to name one feature that you would remove from Go. What feature would people remove from Go? We’re going head to head, Llewellyn and Grzeg. Llewellyn, what do you think? What one feature would people remove from Go?

Garbage collection?

Just let your programs crash. [laughter] Did they say garbage collection? Gophers say… [fail alert] Oh, I can’t believe it. They didn’t say that. Okay, Grzeg, what do you think?

Generics.

Ooh, generics. That’s an interesting answer. Did gophers say generics? [win alert] Yes, they did, and it’s in the second place, with 12 people. So you take control of the board… And you know what that means; it’s only Wiktor again. Wiktor.

I would say the goto keyword. Nobody uses that. When have you used the goto keyword?

Only as a joke.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. I wrote goto hell. I had a label “hell”. [laughter] Okay, Wiktor says goto… But what the gophers say? [fail alert] No, people love that. They love spaghetti code.

Nobody just thought of it. It’s just so unused.

Yeah, exactly. It’s so unpopular they didn’t even think about removing it. Okay, don’t worry though; you lost a life, but you still have three lives. Diana, what do we think? Can you sound worried into the microphone, please? It adds drama for the podcast.

init.

init. Isn’t it? Is it init? Gophers say… [fail alert] No. Okay… Well, I probably would get rid of init. But no, we’ve only got one answer on the board. That’s generics, in second place. Grzeg, you can probably think of one, can’t you? It’s your last life, so you’d better –

It’s challenging, because I like everything in Go…

Ah, sweet… You don’t get any points for being a suck-up. [laughter] I’m sorry.

I don’t know… Make?

Make. What - so you just don’t have maps?

For example.

Yeah, for example. Let’s see… Grzeg says make. Gophers say? [fail alert] No, they like making; they’re like allocating stuff. Unfortunately, you lose all three lives. It’s now time to see if the other team can steal the points here. Not so many points to win, but you know, it’s still worth doing, ain’t it? So you’re allowed to confer. Please do so into the microphone. You just have to get one of these right, and you steal the whole thing.

Can we ask the audience?

No.

May I call a friend?

It’s not Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.

Okay, guys, what you would remove? What did you write, actually?

I don’t remember what they did write.

I have no idea. How about wrong answers only? Let’s say - we already said to remove the garbage collector… Let’s remove something useful, too? [laughter]

Okay, enough to press you for an answer…

Maybe someone wrote “everything”?

Okay. Is that your answer?

Let’s do type inheritance.

Type inheritance. Okay. So you’re saying type inheritance… Let’s see - gophers say? [fail alert] No, they didn’t say that. That means that team zero takes those 12 points. This is interesting… Let’s find out what people said though. In fifth position here it was cgo. Five people said they would remove cgo. I think that’s fair enough.

[00:14:15.13] In at number four, named returns. So just keeping those return values unnamed. Seven people said that. In number three, errors. 10 people said they would remove errors. To be fair, if you can write code that doesn’t have any errors, you’re doing pretty well. But the top answer for this, “Name one feature you would remove from Go”, the top answer was “Nothing.” And that was 17 people. Somebody also said “That plugin system that never really worked properly to begin with.” Someone answered that as well. Okay, so congrats to Team Zero there. We’re going to now move into a special round, round four. This is our unpopular round. So now what you’re trying to do is guess the opposite. You’re trying to find out the least popular answers. Wiktor, you can take a guess.

Okay.

Go on then.

Maybe Haskell.

Haskell.

Yes. I have no idea about any other unpopular languages.

Okay. You said Haskell. Gophers say… [fail alert] By the way, this round is slightly differently. We’re just going to alternate between the two. So Val, it’s your turn.

Yeah. C#.

C#. Gophers say? [fail alert] No. I’m afraid not. Diana, what’s your least favorite programming language? What’s the most unpopular answer, do you think? Yeah, it’s more complicated than a Christopher Nolan film, this round.

PHP?

PHP. Gophers say? [win alert] Yes, it’s on the board, at number three, in the middle there. 11 people said it, which gets you 15 points. Okay, Andrii, what do we think? What’s your least favorite programming language? What was the most unpopular?

Mine personally is JavaScript.

JavaScript. Well, let’s see what gophers say… [win alert] Yes, it’s on the board, in position one. 24 people said it, which gets you 5 points. It was the most popular answer, so you see, you get fewer points… Because we’re looking for unpopular answers. Makes sense now, doesn’t it? Okay, Grzeg… You can do it.

There was C#, but I will go for C.

Oh, C. Gophers say? [fail alert] No, I’m afraid not. It’s not on there. Right. Llwellyn?

I will go for Java. Being verbose.

Okay. You say Java. Gophers say? [win alert] Yes. Second place. 17 people said it, which gets you 10 points. Well done. Okay, back to Wiktor.

C# was mentioned, C also… Let’s go with C++.

Why not? Wiktor says C++. Gophers say? [win alert] Yes, it’s on there, in position five. Five people said it, but that gets you 25 points, because it’s unpopular; it is the best-scoring answer. Well done. There’s one more on here now to get… Val, can you get this one?

Yeah, let’s go for Ruby. I like Ruby, but let’s go for it.

Okay, let’s go for Ruby. Gophers say? [fail alert] Sorry, no. Diana. Into the mic, please…

I’m just whispering…

I know you are, but it’ll be good on the podcast, in case there’s any creeps listening.

[laughs]

We’ll cut that.

Let’s take Python.

Let’s take Python. Gophers say? [win alert] Yes, you got it. The fourth one. It gets you 20 points, because six people said it. Excellent. So let’s check in with the scores, see how we’re doing here. Team One has 63 points. Very respectable number of points. But in the lead, by quite a margin at the moment, Team Zero has 119 coins. [applause] It’s all still to play for, because our next round is what I like to call Double Points.

[00:18:05.18] We asked gophers “If you weren’t in tech, what job would you have?” That’s how we asked them as well. If you weren’t in tech, what job would you have? Wiktor and Val, you’re going head to head to try and crack the case.

Electrician.

Electrician?

Yeah.

Okay. Would they be an electrician? Gophers say? [fail alert] No, unfortunately not. Wiktor.

I would go with thinking outside of the box… Let’s go with none. So if you hadn’t had a job in tech, you would be unemployed.

Okay. Could well be the answer. Let’s see… Did they say none? [win alert] Yeah, so it was none, or no idea, or I don’t know. Five people said that, and that gets you 10 points, because I’ve doubled it… Yeah, yeah. Okay, good. Diana, it’s definitely your turn next, obviously. So what would you guess? If you weren’t in tech, what job would you have?

Actually, my answer is pretty close, but more like restauranteur, because everyone loves food.

Like a chef maybe?

Well, maybe less of a chef, but maybe more like owning a restaurant…

Owning a restaurant. Okay. Well, if it’s in that area, we’ll give it to you. Let’s see. Okay, so working in a restaurant. Gophers say? [fail alert] No, they didn’t say that. You lose another life, I’m afraid. Or a life. You lose one life, yes. But you’ve lost lives before, so technically I’m still right. Okay. What do you think, Grzeg?

How about a teacher?

How about a teacher? Yeah. And some people are teachers and in tech; they might well enjoy that. It’s a good answer. Well, let’s find out if it’s good… Gophers say? [win alert] Yes, it’s good. Teacher, they said; it was the top one. Teacher or coach. That’s what. Seven people said that, but if I crunch the numbers, that gets you 14 points, because I’ve doubled it for you. Not many people answered – seven people, yeah. But these are the top answers. Could you be pedantic into the microphone, please? [laughter]

Yeah, so my thinking right now is in tech we like fixing bugs, and there’s a profession when you fix people… So I’d go with a doctor.

Oh, yeah. Okay, fix – it’s just a similar thing. You just plug them into a debugger, find out what’s going on, edit their DNA…

Basically, yeah. The problem is you don’t have Ctrl+Z.

Good point. Yeah. Okay, let’s find out if a doctor is on the board. Gophers say? [fail alert] No, they didn’t say it. You lose another life.

They don’t like fixing people.

No, they don’t. They don’t usually like people… [laughter] Okay, you’ve lost two lives, but you’ve still got another life, and two spaces. Diana, it’s your turn to have a guess.

Maybe just any kind of engineer?

Oh, engineering in general.

Yeah.

That’s a good answer, I think. Let’s see. Gophers say? [fail alert] No, they didn’t. And that’s your three lives, I’m afraid… So there’s 24 points here to steal. Team One, into the microphone, confer. What do you think? Can you steal this? There are two options you can get.

Guys, we should go for cooking. [laughter]

What about something with numbers? Actuary, accountant?

I guess accountant is pretty good. Yeah, we like spreadsheets…

Okay, it’s pressure… Accountant?

Okay, accountant. I mean, if that’s the answer, I’ll give you the points myself out of my own points. Accountant. Gophers say? [fail alert] No, I’m afraid not. So you don’t steal the points. That means that Team Zero takes those 24 points. And let’s have a look at just some interesting answers… Okay, so at the top we had teacher and coach, and in the fourth place there people said none, or no idea. In position number three, carpenter. Five people said that as well, which would have got your 10 points. [unintelligible 00:22:00.23] And in number two, position number two was scientist. Yeah, that makes sense. Six people said that, which would have got you - I think 12 points, if I’ve done the math correctly.

[00:22:17.20] Okay, brilliant. Let me tell you some of the other answers we got. One person said goat farmer… Which I assume means they want to be the best farmer of all time… [laughter] Someone said a gelato maker, which I think is just a machine, isn’t it? Someone said a cheese shop owner. And then one person just wrote bum, which in the US means just homeless, or just nothing, I think, really…

Hopefully it’s Thomas.

Could be. Okay, great. Now we’re gonna go to –

I think bum goes to the no idea category. Doesn’t it?

Does it? Could be. Yeah, good point. Wiktor knows. This is a great point, Wiktor. Thank you so much. Okay, we’re gonna go into round six. [applause] Okay, so the question is, what is your favorite dev tool? This is the last round, by the way, so you really have to sort of – Team One, you really have to just pull a miracle out really. I suggest you have a word with [unintelligible 00:23:11.27] What is your favorite dev tool? So to see who gets this board, we’re gonna go with Andrii first… Andrii, what do you think?

Can you specify what is dev tool?

No…!

Thank you… [laughter]

This is whatever they think they mean by this… So what would a lot of people say?

Yeah, I think they wrote Ruby, or… Go Land…

Go Land?

Yeah.

Yeah, okay. Andrii says Go Land. Gophers say? [win alert] yes, it’s on the board, and it’s the top answer. 17 people said it, which gets you 34 points. The original name for Go Land, if you didn’t know, was Go Glammed. Genuinely. Look it up. Baffling. Okay, you’ve got control of the board now. Llwellyn.

VS Code?

VS Code, that’s probably my favorite dev tool… But is it lots of people’s? Gophers say? [win alert] Yes, it’s in the second place. 12 people said that, worth 24 points. This is going really well now… Val, pressure’s on.

Yeah, let’s go for something cool. Go fmt.

Go fmt is their favorite dev tool. Yeah?

Yeah, why not?

Are you happy with that answer?

I’m not sure, but yes.

Okay. Well, let’s see. Is Go fmt – actually, this totally makes sense, doesn’t it? It’s a great tool. Gophers say? [fail alert] No, they didn’t say it. It would be my answer, I think. One of them. Okay, Andrii, what do we think?

Yeah, let’s continue with IDEs, and go for Vim.

Vim. Okay. Gophers say? [win alert] Yes, in position number three. Vim or Neovim. Seven people said it, which gets you 14 points. Oh yeah, you’re on a clean sweep here… Llwellyn, what do you think?

I’m not sure if it’s a dev tool, but I use it during development, so let’s go for Docker.

Docker. Oh, that’s not a bad answer. Gophers say? [fail alert] No. So you lose another life, but you have still a life…

Last one?

Pardon?

One more shot?

One more shot. What do we think?

I will go for Emacs. I use Emacs – I see Vim, but I should go for Emacs.

Okay, Emacs. Let’s see if it’s on there. What’s your favorite dev tool? Did they say Emacs? Gophers say? [fail alert] No, they didn’t. Unfortunately, you lose those three lives. And with 72 points on the board, the other team may have a chance to steal. You can confer into the mic.

If they understood dev tool as IDE, we might consider going for Atom, from GitHub.

You’ve got a grown [unintelligible 00:25:56.02]

Wiktor, you’ve got a you’ve got a brilliant idea. What is your shot now?

My shot would be, for example go debugger, Delve, or Govet, something like this… This is what I use. But I think that people understood it as editors, not as the development tools in general… So I think Atom is a good shot.

[unintelligible 00:26:18.02]

Okay, so if we’re going with a debugger, Delve.

Going for Delve. A debugger. Yeah, well, let’s just say a debugger. Okay, Gophers say? [fail alert] No, I’m afraid not. So that means team one takes those 72 points… And that means – ah, it was so close; look at this… We’ll come to the scores in a moment… Let’s just find out - we had Go Land at the top there, with 17 people. VS Code, 12 people. Vim or Neovim, seven people. And in the last position there was the terminal. Five people love the terminal. It’s their favorite. I can also tell you that two people did say Docker… Two people said also Coffee. Fair enough. And one person said Grafana, and it wasn’t me. But good answers.

Okay, so now we’re gonna look at the final scores, and we’re gonna see who’s won the amazing prize. In last place – no, in second place. Silver medal. Team One, with a very respectable 135, but stealing it, and you were in the lead from the beginning, and you kind of stayed there. Team Zero, with 143! [applause] Thank you so much for joining us. This was great fun. What a great crowd. Thanks for joining us, and we’ll see you next time on Go Time.