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Why Generics?

blog.golang.org

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Re: Why Generics?

#11

Post by kd0amg »

dimgl wrote: post #7
mlevental wrote: post #4

why are people obsessed with simplicity? there's a quotation my Einstein that I like to keep in mind: "make things as simple as they can be but no simpler". the implication being that if you make things too simple then you actually break things. lack of generics makes for software that's actually more complex than it needs to be. Take for example Swift: lots of complex features (protocols, all manner of functional tr…

I have yet to find one practical application for generics in the apps I've built in Go.

Generics are more for developing reusable libraries than single applications.

Re: Why Generics?

#12

Post by mlevental »

dimgl wrote: post #7
mlevental wrote: post #4

why are people obsessed with simplicity? there's a quotation my Einstein that I like to keep in mind: "make things as simple as they can be but no simpler". the implication being that if you make things too simple then you actually break things. lack of generics makes for software that's actually more complex than it needs to be. Take for example Swift: lots of complex features (protocols, all manner of functional tr…

I have yet to find one practical application for generics in the apps I've built in Go.

That's because you write a particular kind of program. Notice that there are no good ORMs or numerical libraries. Both of these are use cases for generics. Of course it doesn't help that the go community is convinced that ORMs are evil (which is just posthoc rationalization for being unable to write one).

Re: Why Generics?

#13

Post by dimgl »

mlevental wrote: post #12
dimgl wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have yet to find one practical application for generics in the apps I've built in Go.

That's because you write a particular kind of program. Notice that there are no good ORMs or numerical libraries. Both of these are use cases for generics. Of course it doesn't help that the go community is convinced that ORMs are evil (which is just posthoc rationalization for being unable to write one).

Developers think ORMs are evil because they've had horrible experiences with ORMs in general. I'm one of them. The only ORM that I enjoyed using was Dapper, and it's barely an ORM.

Re: Why Generics?

#14

Post by reificator »

mlevental wrote: post #12
dimgl wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have yet to find one practical application for generics in the apps I've built in Go.

That's because you write a particular kind of program. Notice that there are no good ORMs or numerical libraries. Both of these are use cases for generics. Of course it doesn't help that the go community is convinced that ORMs are evil (which is just posthoc rationalization for being unable to write one).

> Of course it doesn't help that the go community is convinced that ORMs are evil (which is just posthoc rationalization for being unable to write one).

Yep. I held this opinion before Go came out, only because I couldn't write an ORM in Go.

Re: Why Generics?

#15

Post by kfoo020njdj »

mlevental wrote: post #12
dimgl wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have yet to find one practical application for generics in the apps I've built in Go.

That's because you write a particular kind of program. Notice that there are no good ORMs or numerical libraries. Both of these are use cases for generics. Of course it doesn't help that the go community is convinced that ORMs are evil (which is just posthoc rationalization for being unable to write one).

“I can see the value so those that can’t are inferior.”

You basically just post hoc rationalized their indifference for ORMs by making them sound incompetent

As if there are no other arguments for avoiding them that perhaps seem valuable to people that are not you?

It sounds reasonable to me you conjured the hot take, acknowledged it was post hoc rationalization on your part, but posted anyway, projecting your capacity for after the fact rationalizing onto ORM haters in the Go community.

Re: Why Generics?

#16

Post by stouset »

dimgl wrote: post #7
mlevental wrote: post #4

why are people obsessed with simplicity? there's a quotation my Einstein that I like to keep in mind: "make things as simple as they can be but no simpler". the implication being that if you make things too simple then you actually break things. lack of generics makes for software that's actually more complex than it needs to be. Take for example Swift: lots of complex features (protocols, all manner of functional tr…

I have yet to find one practical application for generics in the apps I've built in Go.

And I had yet to find a single practical application for closures, right up until the moment I started using Ruby (and later, Rust).

Turns out that they’re so useful in practice that they’ve been bolted on to—as far as I can tell—nearly every language in widespread use today. None of these languages “needed” such an improvement. Billions of lines of Java and C# were written without this feature. And yet today it would be virtually unthinkable to release a language without them.

Re: Why Generics?

#18

Post by Smaug123 »

dimgl wrote: post #7
mlevental wrote: post #4

why are people obsessed with simplicity? there's a quotation my Einstein that I like to keep in mind: "make things as simple as they can be but no simpler". the implication being that if you make things too simple then you actually break things. lack of generics makes for software that's actually more complex than it needs to be. Take for example Swift: lots of complex features (protocols, all manner of functional tr…

I have yet to find one practical application for generics in the apps I've built in Go.

Safety! Generics allow you to get [theorems for free](https://ecee.colorado.edu/ecen5533/fall11/reading/free.pdf), so generics make certain classes of error extremely hard to make.

Re: Why Generics?

#19

Post by pknopf »

dimgl wrote: post #7
mlevental wrote: post #4

why are people obsessed with simplicity? there's a quotation my Einstein that I like to keep in mind: "make things as simple as they can be but no simpler". the implication being that if you make things too simple then you actually break things. lack of generics makes for software that's actually more complex than it needs to be. Take for example Swift: lots of complex features (protocols, all manner of functional tr…

I have yet to find one practical application for generics in the apps I've built in Go.

That's crazy. I've seen people implement templating of go files to support generics in Go because it's serves a valuable purpose.

Re: Why Generics?

#20

Post by archy_ »

haolez wrote: post #2

Personally, I prefer the current interfaces-based solution to generics. It's a little verbose, but keeps the language simple. However, I think that the people we should be listening most are the ones developing huge projects in Go, like Kubernetes. Would having generics with this new contracts thing make it easier to develop and maintain e.g. Kubernetes? I'm truly curious.

Agreed on keeping the status quo, adding generics makes it really easy to write bad code and increases mental overhead. Simplicity is what we should be going for, not having generics should've been kept as a selling point.
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