Talk:Go! (programming language)

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)[reply]

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

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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 93.152.163.40 (talk) 07:34, 12 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]