# gopls

Hacker Approved page: https://hackerapproved.com/p/gopls/

6 people recommended gopls in Hacker News comments, 1 had mixed feelings and 4 criticized it, November 2025 to October 2026. It was recommended in 4 of 12 months, in 6 threads. It does not meet the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Go language server that gives editors completion, refactoring and stub generation; people value how it catches problems as they type. Critics report high memory use and weak file-move refactoring.

Summary written by Claude from 13 comments. It was written before the November 2026 recount, and 11 of those comments still count.

## Why people recommend it

- Catches bugs and warnings while editing (3 comments in the sample): "Since we enabled it over a year ago in gopls, our LSP server, we have discovered hundreds of bugs." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47256495)) "gopls is a great LSP, though, and it warns you about this immediately" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49066119)) "Gopls typically does this on save as you are editing" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46434999))
- Day-to-day refactoring and stub generation (2 comments in the sample): "gopls will even offer to implement stubs for missing methods." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48063526)) "gopls supports most refactoring you'd need to do day to day." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49020340))

## Other language servers people recommend

- [rust-analyzer](https://hackerapproved.com/p/rust-analyzer/): 11 recommend, 5 mixed, 20 criticize
- [Rust Glancer](https://hackerapproved.com/p/rust-glancer/): 9 recommend, 1 mixed, 0 criticize
- [clangd](https://hackerapproved.com/p/clangd/): 8 recommend, 7 mixed, 5 criticize
- [ruby-lsp](https://hackerapproved.com/p/ruby-lsp/): 6 recommend, 0 mixed, 1 criticize

## The badge

A product earns the Hacker Approved badge when at least 10 people recommend it, recommenders outnumber critics at least 2 to 1 (mixed feelings count toward neither side), it was recommended in at least 4 of the 12 months and in at least 5 different threads, and no single thread supplies more than half of the people who recommend it. Health and money products are never badged.

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "gopls", https://hackerapproved.com/p/gopls/ (6 recommend, 1 mixed, 4 criticize; Hacker News comments, November 2025 to October 2026).

Counts updated 2 Nov 2026, with data through October 31, 2026.