Why Generics?

#1

Post by johnvega » Wed, Jul 31, 2019, 6:20 PM UTC

Re: Why Generics?

#2

Post by haolez » Wed, Jul 31, 2019, 7:12 PM UTC

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.

Re: Why Generics?

#3

Post by throwawayoo » Wed, Jul 31, 2019, 7:13 PM UTC

What are Generics?

Re: Why Generics?

#4

Post by mlevental » Wed, Jul 31, 2019, 7:15 PM UTC

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 transformations, generics, enums, structs, iterators, objects with many method qualifiers, etc) but really nice and efficient to program in.

Re: Why Generics?

#5

Post by moomin » Wed, Jul 31, 2019, 7:16 PM UTC

    Go 3: Why HKT?
    Go 4: Why homoiconicity?
    Go 5: Why uniqueness and borrowing?

Re: Why Generics?

#6

Post by gclaugus » Wed, Jul 31, 2019, 7:18 PM UTC

moomin wrote: post #5

Go 3: Why HKT? Go 4: Why homoiconicity? Go 5: Why uniqueness and borrowing?

I am ok with this progression.

Re: Why Generics?

#7

Post by dimgl » Wed, Jul 31, 2019, 7:18 PM UTC

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.

Re: Why Generics?

#8

Post by parhamn » Wed, Jul 31, 2019, 7:18 PM UTC

That time of week to rehash all the Go Generics comments!

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=generics&sort=byPopularity&pre...

Re: Why Generics?

#9

Post by Filligree » Wed, Jul 31, 2019, 7:19 PM UTC

Why generics, indeed?

There must be an answer to this, but I've never seen a good response to why they aren't implementing parametric types and (single-parameter) typeclasses instead.

Simplicity? Yes, but generics are hardly any simpler.

Re: Why Generics?

#10

Post by rad_gruchalski » Wed, Jul 31, 2019, 7:20 PM UTC

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.

Every project I’ve written so far in golang could benefit from generics.