Generics enabled by default in Go tip • Hacker News Board

Re: Generics enabled by default in Go tip

#161

Post by dehrmann » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 6:53 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #148

dehrmann wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You wouldn't As someone who hasn't used Go, what would I do, then? The question about a generic data structure was very practical, your response was philosophical, and I still need a linked list.

You would use a slice as your non-associative container, and you would write a loop over it. You just wouldn't use a linked list.

And honestly, 9 times out of 10, I'm better off rebuilding the list because vectors have lower memory overhead and the memory is contiguous. But that one time... I've also been spoiled by Java's very rich set of collections.

Re: Generics enabled by default in Go tip

#162

Post by adamlett » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 6:53 AM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #160

silisili wrote: post #9

Not to be contrary for its sake, but I'll say this is one change I'm really not happy about. I feel like it's a change to placate many, while driving a lesser amount away. Which is fine, but still feels like the end of something, as I am one of the aforementioned 'lesser.' As for why...I love above most the simplicity and readability of Go. Any change which encroaches that, which this does, is a net negative to me.

Either a language changes to keep interest up and bring in a new audience, or it's left behind by advances to and the status quo (and what's considered a minimum set of features) and stagnates. Just look at Perl. Stuff written 20 years ago is likely to work without change on the newest release more often than not. For certain work contexts, like system utilities and long life core programs, this can be amazingly usef…

C

Re: Generics enabled by default in Go tip

#163

Post by yawaramin » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 6:55 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #98

jolux wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are certain things that just can’t be done without generics, though. Type safe higher order functions, type safe custom collections, etc. Of course, perhaps these are all just subjective to you, because you can still write any program you need without them. But not having this feature does constrain the set of type-safe programs you can write quite a bit.

I feel like it pretty much always turns out that the things you can't do without generics are, like, second-order things. Higher order functions, type safe custom collections, those are tools. What we care about mostly is what we actually build , and people build pretty much everything in every language, generics or not.

Yeah, but programming is the business of building little tools to help you build what you actually want to build, over and over again. E.g., you might have some API calls in your code and need to implement an error handler on some of them. You could repeat the error handler code on all of them, or you could extract it out to a generic function and just use it as a wrapper for the others:

    let call1 arg = ...
    let call2 arg = ...

    let error_handler call arg = ...

    let call1 = error_handler call1
    let call2 = error_handler call2

Python made this kind of technique famous, but languages with generics can do it pretty well too.

Re: Generics enabled by default in Go tip

#164

Post by kbenson » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 6:57 AM UTC

adamlett wrote: post #162

kbenson wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either a language changes to keep interest up and bring in a new audience, or it's left behind by advances to and the status quo (and what's considered a minimum set of features) and stagnates. Just look at Perl. Stuff written 20 years ago is likely to work without change on the newest release more often than not. For certain work contexts, like system utilities and long life core programs, this can be amazingly usef…

C

C is only used because it has a widely deployed set of libraries and by it's nature as an underpinning of most foundational software because it was the language of choice when we really started hitting exponential growth in computing. If there wasn't an enormous set of software and source code out there for it already, would there be any reason to use it over anything else?

And even then it's latest language standard update was in 2018. You still have to deal with the fact it's changing and keep up with it if you plan to read or use others code. And of you don't, then you can safely not care about advances in C, just as you can safely not care about changes in Go.

Re: Generics enabled by default in Go tip

#165

Post by puddingforears » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 6:59 AM UTC

SamReidHughes wrote: post #126

deanCommie wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do if you want your language to have a reusable Linked List data structure so that everyone doesn't have to re-implement their own version of it for each content type.

Linked lists are the one data structure that you never end up wanting a generic version of. They aren't really used as containers. (Except badly.)

They’re the easiest stack structure to implement. All your operations are against the head of the list and you either have a thing, don’t have a thing, or add a thing. I’d like to be able to maintain a stack of things whose types I don’t have to manually reify and erase. That’s not a tall order, and it’s certainly not “complexity”. It’s markedly weird that I can’t have that same structure and associated operations be usable regardless of the thing I’m working with.

Re: Generics enabled by default in Go tip

#166

Post by tephra » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 6:59 AM UTC

adamlett wrote: post #162

kbenson wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either a language changes to keep interest up and bring in a new audience, or it's left behind by advances to and the status quo (and what's considered a minimum set of features) and stagnates. Just look at Perl. Stuff written 20 years ago is likely to work without change on the newest release more often than not. For certain work contexts, like system utilities and long life core programs, this can be amazingly usef…

C

C11 introduced type generic expressions.

Re: Generics enabled by default in Go tip

#167

Post by pjmlp » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 7:00 AM UTC

Finally catching up modern times!

Welcome to 1976.

Re: Generics enabled by default in Go tip

#168

Post by pjmlp » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 7:04 AM UTC

adamlett wrote: post #162

kbenson wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either a language changes to keep interest up and bring in a new audience, or it's left behind by advances to and the status quo (and what's considered a minimum set of features) and stagnates. Just look at Perl. Stuff written 20 years ago is likely to work without change on the newest release more often than not. For certain work contexts, like system utilities and long life core programs, this can be amazingly usef…

C

ISO C23 is coming up, and until the last UNIX stops working, C's existence is assured.

Re: Generics enabled by default in Go tip

#169

Post by shp0ngle » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 7:06 AM UTC

Hey, instead of “return value, err”, we can now write it as generic Option!

Kidding kidding, please don’t do it kids

Re: Generics enabled by default in Go tip

#170

Post by puddingforears » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 7:06 AM UTC

dilyevsky wrote: post #60

bouncycastle wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Singly linked lists are something from CS1 where you learn about data structures. You rarely use them in practice. In most cases slices and maps do the job fine.

They also have absolutely terrible performance due to poor cache locality and putting pressure on GC

They make a great stack, though. Cheap to use and easy to implement.