Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Hey, thanks for the reply. That sounds really nice!

I wonder, which aspects of the "Go" std lib are considered strong? Would you say it is more like .net where the std-lib also comes with framework-grade capabilities such as REST-endpoints and setting up applications?

Because in the classical sense of a library, I think Java is fantastic (collections, strings, NIO, HTTP 2.0, etc.). But it misses framework-level out-of-the-box solutions.



So take this with a big mountain of salt as I am newer to Go and my experience with .Net is a bit dated but I do have 7 YoE with C#.

The C# stdlib is larger and more batteries included for sure. But, it feels less focused than Go to me. Over its history it has supported a ton of different styles of programming. Whereas Go’s maintainers have been, at least so far, more obsessive on keeping the language small.

As a result you get libraries and codebases that have a mix of legacy and modern flavors of .NET. That isn’t the fault of the language but more of its large history and wider scope. GoLang doesn’t have a rich UI library built in for example whereas .NET has 3 if I am remembering correctly.

I like the focus of Go but C# is a great language and .NET is an excellent framework.

Here are some things that I think Go does better though:

- TLS and x509 stdlib is fantastic

- Explicit error returns instead of Exception throwing

- A developer culture around idiomatic Go. It’s subjective but it sets a tone for a single coding style.

- Less “magic”. This is more of a sin of Java frameworks but .NET has lots of higher level abstractions the push lots of interactions behind the curtain.

- tiny docker images and super fast startup.

Here are some things I miss from C#:

- really nice Enums

- Better support for functional programming.

- LINQ to objects

- Annotations, specifically validation logic as annotations.

- JSON handling is more straightforward

.NET is super capable though. Nothing wrong with using it and it is much more broadly applicable than Go in my opinion.

But, I like the ergonomics of Go and for backend services and CLI tools I think it is a strong choice. But, I wouldn’t choose it to build a game or a desktop/mobile GUI application currently.


Not STD comes close to .NET, IMO.




Consider applying for YC's Winter 2026 batch! Applications are open till Nov 10

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: