Google's Go Language First Impressions

Google recently announced the launch of a new programming language called: Go. Its creators are software heavy-weights like Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike and Ken Thompson. It's a C style language, it has garbage collection and claims to compile fast.

Its idiosyncrasies follow.

1. Backward declaration: Instead of declaring a variable like "int a", you do "var a int".
   
2. Type derivation with ":=". You can initialize variables and Go will derive its type for you. For example doing "a := 1.0" automatically initalizes "a" to a "float".
   
3. Semicolons are not required at the end of each statement.
   
4. The only looping construct available is the "for" statement. No "while" or "do-while".
5. The parameters for the "for" and "if" statements don't need to be within parentheses (I'm shocked and crying)
6. Unicode strings which are immutable.
   
7. Pointers but no pointer arithmetic.
8. Its compiler is currently not available for Windows -- only for Linux and Mac. Doubt if a cygwin port is available.
   

Maybe more later.

Long Runs and Charts

I always wondered how the guys at Science of Sport used to generate all the beautiful graphs in their analyses. The answer seems to be Microsoft Excel 2007. It generates amazing charts, unlike its predecessor

For example, the graph below shows my post-jaundice long runs. It was generated after playing around with the chart settings for 1 hour (not complaining, just wanted to check out all the options).


Ah ... pure bliss!