Talk:Go! (programming language)

Book

There is a Go! text book available, written by Francis McCabe.

lulu.com/content/paperback-book/lets-go/641689

Unfortunately, lulu.com seems to be blacklisted, so I can't link to it. Update: I added a Google books link. 99.241.159.185 (talk) 20:12, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Much appreciated, that's a great solution BarryNorton (talk) 21:24, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Deletion

I see no evidence that this is a notable topic. Unless the subject can be verified as notable I'm going to list this for deletion. Jefffire (talk) 21:44, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

It is definitely notable. F. McCabe, one of the programmers who wrote Go! is currently attempting to get Google to change the name of their language because he had written several papers and a book about his programming language. http://code.google.com/p/go/issues/detail?id=9 for the ongoing discussion on Google's forums. 12.116.117.150 (talk) 22:10, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Complete nonsense, it's still being actively developed after more than five years and is subject to a credible journal publication and a book. The anti-academic bias on Wikipedia is becoming ridiculous. Why don't you try to tell me how much of this will be notable in five years: List of The X Factor finalists (UK series 6)? BarryNorton (talk) 22:13, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

This is outrageous. The whole point of academic peer review - especially in computer science and related fields - is to check in detail whether material is indeed accurate, relevant and notable. Yet here we seem to have a Wikipedian deciding he knows better than experienced researchers in the field. Mike.stannett (talk) 01:32, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Being mentioned in a handful among millions of academic papers published each year does not automatically make something notable, nor does the fact that it coincidentally has the same name as something that is notable. The fact that this article appeared only after the naming issue came up is telling. Mike, keep in mind that Wikipedia is not an academic journal. We should be guided by WP:Notability. Specifically, a topic is notable if it "has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject". This article completely fails on two of the points:

• "Sources", for notability purposes, should be secondary sources.
• "Independent of the subject" excludes works produced by those affiliated with the subject including (but not limited to): self-publicity, advertising, self-published material by the subject

I've examined some of the papers that have cited the original Go! publications, and found that they only contain cursory mentions of Go! in their reviews of earlier work. There's no evidence that Go! has had notable influence on later work. Jefffire, unless new material comes to light, I suggest you go ahead and nominate the article for deletion. --Jonovision (talk) 05:41, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Then you must not have read Bordini's survey in Informatica (!) which devotes three paragraphs to the nature and history of Go! This is now cited and I trust the matter is closed BarryNorton (talk) 06:26, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I did read that, so let's try to keep out personal accusations. The Informatica article simply summarizes the original author's work, and does not establish why the language is notable. --Jonovision (talk) 06:41, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

It's not a personal accusation, it's just that it's pretty difficult to see how you could fail to notice how anyone claiming to have looked through the citation network could have missed such a high profile citation. As it is, you're barking up the wrong tree with this whole 'notability means demonstrable influence on later work' argument anyway, as that would mean deleting Google's Go language! What's more, Merek's paper shows such influence - I'm quite willing to add this too, if you can demonstrate that your criterion is necessary - but for now I close the notability argument having included a second journal paper citing and describing the language. Again, if the language were not notable for its combinations of features a survey would simply say "(see also Go! []...)" rather than devote any space to a non-notable language. BarryNorton (talk) 06:47, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

This is not a high profile citation, it's a brief summary, which hardly includes any information that is not in the abstracts of the original author's papers. It establishes the existence of the Go! language, and nothing more. I also believe it is irrelevant to debate the existence of even less notable languages, or the notability of Google's Go. Who is Merek? --Jonovision (talk) 07:22, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

You're parsing that incorrectly: it's a citation, which is high-profile because it's made in a notable journal. As I've said, you don't spend half a page in a survey on something you merely want to establish the existence of. Please excuse my typo, Marek Sergot has at least one article on agents showing influence from Frank's approach (which I assume you also saw in the citation network?) BarryNorton (talk) 07:37, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

It's standard practice for academic journals require authors to extensively search for previous work and list it in their publications. Having a few citations is expected for a paper in a journal that's read by others in the same field. So far you've mentioned two small summaries in survey papers (which also mention over a dozen other similar projects, without any claim about Go!'s significance, only it's existence), and one citation by someone who works in the same department at the same university (maybe the guy in the office across the hall?). I still don't think this notable. --Jonovision (talk) 07:58, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

"It's standard practice for academic journals require authors to extensively search for previous work and list it in their publications." - it's a survey paper, this is not some single sentence in a related work section, but (reproduced for the benefit of anyone else who wants to consider the notability of the reference because I'm finished trying to make Jonovision understand) BarryNorton (talk) 08:13, 12 November 2009 (UTC):

"Go! [12] is a multi-paradigm agent programming language, with a declarative subset of function and relation definitions, an imperative subset comprising action procedure definitions, and rich program structuring mechanism. Based on the symbolic programming language April [36], Go! extends it with knowledge representation features of logic programming, yielding a multi-threaded, strongly typed and higher order (in the functional-programming sense) language. Inherited from April, threads primarily communicate through asynchronous message passing. Threads, executing action rules, react to received messages using pattern matching and pattern-based message reaction rules. A communication daemon enables threads in different Go! processes to communicate transparently over a network. Typically, each agent will comprise several threads, each of which can directly communicate with threads in other agents. Threads within a single Go! process, hence in the same agent, can also communicate by manipulating shared cell or dynamic relation objects. As in Linda tuple stores, these elements are used to coordinate the activities of different threads within an agent. Go! is strongly typed, which can often reduce the programmer’s burden, and compiletime type checking improves code safety. New types can be declared and thereby new data constructors can be introduced. The design of Go! took into consideration critical issues such as security, transparency, and integrity, in regards to the adoption of logic programming technology. Features of Prolog that lack a transparent semantics, such as the cut (‘!’) were left out. In Prolog the same clause syntax is used both for defining relations, with a declarative semantics, and for defining procedures which only have an operational semantics. In Go!, behaviour is described using action rules that have a specialised syntax"

Agreed, before the naming controversy this language was not notable and I doubt much will change. This whole article is an attempt to gain notability where none existed in the past. brontide (talk) 14:25, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I've nominated the article for deletion, as it seems to be entirely sourced off the author's publications. If the only source of notability is the controversy over the Google's language name, then it should be mentioned in Go (programming language), not in a separate article. Laurent (talk) 14:30, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Not only is this untrue, but you've interrupted the full quote from a third party publication on the subject to say it here! BarryNorton (talk) 14:35, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

You mean the text below? I didn't really get what that was, I was just answering to Brontide above. If the text below comes from a secondary source, could you provide a link? Laurent (talk) 14:39, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I've replaced it where the context explains exactly what it is BarryNorton (talk) 15:07, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

A note about the naming controversy: The naming controversy can be adequately covered in the Google Go article, so that issue alone doesn't make this article notable. Also, keep in mind that notability is not temporary, and a short burst of news on a subject does not constitute evidence of notability. --Jonovision (talk) 05:50, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

This article was not created to document the naming controversy. Rather the name clash highlighted that there is insufficient information online about a reasonably notable language for those who apparently scorn academic publication and look no further (and not even very well) at the results of their own search engine before making their choices BarryNorton (talk) 07:37, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

If there is "insufficient information" and they had to add a Wikipedia entry to tell the world what this language is about, then it is not notable. Kamuz (talk) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 222.225.57.21 (talk) 14:53, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Who is 'they'? I'm not involved in the language, but already knew about it. I believe I'm part of this 'world' you mention BarryNorton (talk) 15:05, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

What coincidental timing. Guess the dark side of Wikipedia strikes again. How about this issue is dropped because it really is a moot point that this language is a hell of a lot more notable than thousands of other Wikipedia articles. The fact that the Google controversy (that likely brought this deletion thing up...hmmm) came up further solidifies its notability. The great kawa (talk) 17:37, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

The coincidence of timing was that the Wikipedia Go! article was written just after Google annouced their Go language. There's no coincidence of timing in the proposal for deletion. It's simply being proposed for deletion soon after being created as any other article about a non-notable topic would be.

This article seems to exist merely to be a forum for supporters of Go! against Google trying to make the 800 pound Google change their name. The article didn't even exist before yesterday when Google announced their language. And is there even a controversy outside of Slashdot and Wikipedia discussion pages? Wikipedia shouldn't even dignify Go! with a disambiguation note. --69.3.214.234 (talk) 00:05, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

May I suggest a massive cleanup of articles on computer programming languages? If Go! is not of note, why is there a page for Befunge? At least Go! is an attempt at something serious. There are several pages on languages that have never been used for anything other than comedy and yet this page may be deleted, it appears, because of the google go naming debarkle. I had not heard of this language before the google announcement, but now I am intrigued by concepts in Go!. This is most definitely of note. I am wondering what you people owe google? (MaxLittlemore) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.214.11.128 (talk) 02:37, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Out of the 500+ esoteric languages listed by the esolangs.org wiki [1], I only counted 9 of the most notable ones having their own Wikipedia article. That seems pretty reasonable to me. And, sadly, I do think Befunge, dating back to 1993, does have more users than Go!. --Jonovision (talk) 04:31, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

I think the editors of Wikipedia all need to be sacked. Memo from the rest of the world to these editors: YOU'RE NOT THAT IMPORTANT. Go ahead, delete this article. And prove to the world that Wikipedia is on a path towards obsolescence. Something else will take over what Wikipedia used to be. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.174.28.11 (talk) 04:24, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

I really understand your frustration. In particular it seems like working at Google and getting blogged about is an automatic ticket to entry, while having a chair at Imperial and publishing in academic journals is so antagonistic to some editors that they're actively hostile. BarryNorton (talk) 08:12, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

The language has several references in notable media:

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&safe=off&rlz=1B3GGGL_enCA305CA305&resnum=0&q=go%20programming%20language&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wn

If it is the subject of multiple notable media reports, it seems to me it passes wiki's notability test.

Mindme (talk) 18:32, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I see there are two go languages, one by google and one by Keith Clark and Francis McCabe. That it is itself part of a controversy covered by notable media, it would seem wiki does a service by having both articles for go and go! Those confused can find information on both. Mindme (talk) 18:37, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Influence

The influence of Go! is now clearly documented via a paper at the ACM's Erlang workshop BarryNorton (talk) 17:38, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

• Go! is only mentioned in passing in conjunction with another paper. I would not say that the influence has been "clearly documented". 146.151.193.100 (talk) 17:49, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

• I'd have to concede that this is a problem with relying on academic sources on Wikipedia - it seems like most editors don't know how to read them. First the journal survey is completely misunderstood, by people who don't understand what a survey paper is, now this. To be clear, if one is presenting original research then merely periphery work goes in the related work section. Anything that is more important goes at the front, either as explicit background or cited in the approach. Anything at all included in a survey paper has been carefully considered. I hope this helps in future. BarryNorton (talk) 08:09, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Absolutely right. Actually I think this is an example of a more insidious anti-academic bias on Wikipedia, not just due to misunderstanding (although that's certainly a factor). --David-Sarah Hopwood ⚥ (talk) 00:57, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Please don't poison the well with snide comments. Restrict talk page comments to how to improve the article. Jefffire (talk) 13:46, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps now that the discussions on deletion and notability (including influence) are closed this discussion should be archived and we can move on with a fresh slate? BarryNorton (talk) 13:53, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm reluctant to continue the debate, but I think it's important to emphasize that no anti-academic bias was at play in the deletion discussion. Nor was this a misunderstanding -- if you read the comments from the deletion debate, there's no evidence of people from the delete side having a lack of knowledge of how peer reviewed journals work. I don't have a problem accepting that you guys disagree with me about the level of notability -- and I haven't accused you of a pro-academic bias, nor of being ignorant of the journal system. Please grant to me and others the same level of respect. (And for the record, I have also been accused of having a pro-academic bias in previous Wikipedia disputes.) --Jonovision (talk) 04:51, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Vandalism

Lose a delete argument, wait for the dust to clear then delete all the references that were used to show notability (despite the many votes upholding their relevance and significance). How long until this is marked for deletion again by Jonovision? BarryNorton (talk) 23:29, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

I presume the "vandalism" you're talking about my clean-up of the article. It was in bad shape after the deletion debate, since a multitude of editors added every bit of information they could find in support of the article's notability. The same thing happened to the DBpedia article. Everyone rushes in to save it, but nobody wants to clean up the mess afterwards. For the record, I was not the one who nominated the article for deletion, and I haven't removed any references (not even the Erlang paper, which most people in the deletion debate agreed was pretty worthless). --Jonovision (talk) 00:12, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, your "clean up". Indeed you haven't actually removed the Erlang reference - you'll wait for someone else to notice you've orphaned it. By "pretty worthless" you're twisting some statements that, in itself, it didn't establish notability. The fact, however, that the language has shown influence on a very widely used language (due to its use in telecoms) remains, and there is no constructive reason to remove a mention of this. On the association of a language that combines Semantic Web representations with tuple-spaced computing for coordination, and projects with are funded to develop the large-scale combination of Semantic Web representations with tuple-space computing for coordination, your justification (that you "don't understand the connection"), apart from being absurd, would surely justify putting a request for clarification here on the talk page, not deletion. Is this normal on Wikipedia, do you think? To delete properly cited edits you "don't understand". BarryNorton (talk) 07:48, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

"For the record, I was not the one who nominated the article for deletion" - no, indeed... you just first suggested it (see above, where the record is preserved). BarryNorton (talk) 07:51, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

"I haven't removed any references" - great... I'd kept the project deliverables (used since I was asked directly about the projects cited) as footnotes, rather than including references to the relevant papers. And you've therefore removed them. If I do the opposite and include the paper references on 'triples-based computing' (precisely the combination of semantics and tuple-based communication) does that mean that you'll leave them be? BarryNorton (talk) 07:54, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

The two inline references I removed (TripCom and SOA4All) make no mention of Go!, and I have absolutely no idea what relevance they have to the article. I'll stand by my decision to remove them, unless someone can explain why they belong in this article. They look spammy to me.

The Erlang reference only mentions Go! in a footnote -- the statement that Go! influenced Erlang (which was released earlier) is at best a synthesis (see WP:NOR), but I'd outright say it's of dubious veracity.

As you can see, I suggested the article should be deleted if no additional sources could be found to establish notability. The normal Wikipedia process is to flag an article for deletion and let people comment on it first, but an overzealous editor didn't bother to wait, which is unfortunate, since it led to the poor tone of the deletion debate. I'm just trying to improve the article here, I'm not trying to set it up for some future deletion. Please give me the benefit of the doubt and don't accuse me of such things. --Jonovision (talk) 08:24, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Actually, there are no requirements to discuss the deletion before nominating an article. In this case, the main person discussing with you was the author of the article, and I doubt he would have admitted it was worthy of deletion even if he thought so. That's why I've nominated it directly so that more people can be involved. An AfD is just that - we discuss the sources and notability, and decide if they fit within the criteria; there's no need to take it personally. The problem is that it went far too passionate because of the Google issue, and with weird assumptions of bad faith (as if there was some kind of Google conspiracy against the article), and that lead to a very poor debate. I still think the sources are very thin but I obviously won't nominate it again for deletion. Laurent (talk) 10:12, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

I see your point. I would have liked to discuss things more myself, especially the larger issue of how we should approach looking at the notability of academic subjects, and judging the reliability of various journals. I got the impression that most people got involved in the deletion debate just to vote either way, without really wanting to look at the broader issues involved. --Jonovision (talk) 19:57, 23 November 2009 (UTC)