Feature request #2006: Make Go REST API

Frustrated by Ruby's lack of performance or useful concurrency, I'm interested in playing with Go. Go addresses both of those concerns while still looking readable and "fun" to work with. Compilation is fast, and things like context-sensitive auto-completion are actually possible.

I'm also interested in functional languages, particularly Clojure and Haskell. I've dabbled in them, but I don't feel like they bring anything game-changing to the world of web programming, due to the nature of the tasks that we end up doing as web programmers. For this reason, Go feels like a better fit. I also feel like deploying it should be a breeze (no need to set up a Java runtime, just compile; the compiled executable is the application).

Non-starters: node.js. I feel like it's a huge step backwards, bringing concurrency at the cost of maintainability and developer happiness (callback hell). I'm guessing that it will flourish for a while, particularly because it uses JavaScript and that's the "assembly language" of the web for the foreseeable future, and eventually fade.

Also, I'm interested in exploring heavier use of client-side logic. I actually think that in many ways the developer tools in modern browsers (debuggers etc) rival and surpass the things that are available in Ruby-land. As far as testing goes, unit-tests in a headless browser are lightning fast.

Combining those ideas, here's an idea for something to hack on:

• build a (read-only) REST-ful web service in Go that reads from the same database as the main application
• start building client-side code to hit the REST service for some things on the site

I don't want to re-invent the wheel nor rewrite the entire site from the ground up. I just want to play.