I tried, and was exited about it, but the lack of easy IDE integration and the lack of a proper debugger were a turn off for me. For now at least.
Two questions to people that use Go:
1. Does Go have a good debugger that is easy to use? i.e. I shouldn't have to mess with the command line, but preferably use it directly from something like eclipse. It should work even in Windows.
2. Is goclipse working properly? Last time I used id, while it would show the syntax fine, the build and run was not working. I had to use the command line.
I think a language should be developed together with its tools. Right now Go is lacking in this department.
> I think a language should be developed together with its tools.
A lot of people will probably not like this answer, but Go's "tools" are the Acme editor and the shell. If you're running on Windows, Acme-SAC (https://code.google.com/p/acme-sac/, or just running Acme under "vanilla" Inferno) is a viable option, and is written in Limbo, a precursor to Go. (It still has some features Go lacks, but is roughly comparable.)
I wouldn't hold my breath on getting former Bell Labs guys to work on a graphical debugger or Eclipse support, so the language is somewhat unlikely to be developed together with those tools.
> I wouldn't hold my breath on getting former Bell Labs guys to work on a graphical debugger or Eclipse support, so the language is somewhat unlikely to be developed together with those tools.
I wouldn't expect them to, and I also really can't understand the appeal of something as complex as an IDE to write code in a language as simple as Go, but Goclipse has been around for a while, and there is support for other IDEs:
If you're using Windows, Zeus IDE has pretty decent debugger integration. It's basically just a front end for gdb, but it does let you trace into both Go and C functions in a nice way. Variable display is a little funky, just a console output, but it gets the job done.
No idea about debugging -- but for other "IDE conveniences", combine Sublime Text (syntax highlighting and general text-editing win) with "GoSublime" (auto-completion & more, https://github.com/DisposaBoy/GoSublime )
I know you say you don't want to mess with the command line debuggers, but Go works with gdb [1]. While gdb looks daunting and antiquated at first, once you learn your way around, you'll feel something is missing from IDE based tools.
This is probably very obvious, but just a note for anyone interested in using gdb.. if you downloaded 64-bit go, you need to use the 64bit gdb to debug it
If you attempt to use the 32 bit gdb, you'll get errors about the executable you're attempting to debug is in an invalid format
I feel very bad for someone who has to have an IDE to write Golang. I'm quite sure that there is no functionality provided by Goclipse that is not provided by GoSublime, and even then it's really not necessary. I like it mostly for auto gofmt.
Two questions to people that use Go:
1. Does Go have a good debugger that is easy to use? i.e. I shouldn't have to mess with the command line, but preferably use it directly from something like eclipse. It should work even in Windows.
2. Is goclipse working properly? Last time I used id, while it would show the syntax fine, the build and run was not working. I had to use the command line.
I think a language should be developed together with its tools. Right now Go is lacking in this department.