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Proposal: Go should have generics

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Re: Proposal: Go should have generics

#111

Post by fauigerzigerk »

enneff wrote: post #52
duaneb wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If recover is used in a file you never read, is its complexity relevant?

I think what's happening here is pcwalton is a language implementer, so when you talk about 'conceptual complexity' he thinks about how the feature is specified, whereas you or I think about how the users of the feature think about and use it. We're all talking past each other a bit, I think.

I disagree completely. We're talking about a feature that can affect the execution path of your code even if you're not using it yourself. For such a feature, you have to work under the assumption that someone will be using it somewhere and you have to deal with it.

The whole reasoning behind not supporting a ton of features in Go is that excuses like "don't need it? Don't use it!" are invalid when it comes to programming language features. And nowhere is this more relevant than for a feature that can unwind the stack without warning.

Re: Proposal: Go should have generics

#112

Post by jcoffland »

Loic wrote: post #94
mattlondon wrote: post #68

I can feel the pain on the Sort issue. I've personally found sorting annoying in Go - I had a bunch of structs representing data entities from a database that all had the same field and I wanted to be able to sort them by this field. Seemed like a LOT of work (basically implementing the same sort that was 99% identical for every struct) or use weird reflection-workarounds to get this to happen. In Java I would not ev…

I had the same feeling first. But practically in my code, I found that ok, you need to copy/paste a bit first but then if it works it stays there, you are not "sorting" new kind of "types" every day. The time spent on coding is way more "around" the algorithms than "within" them. I suppose that we will see more and more code generators which will practically remove the need of generics. We already use them without co…

If you're copying and pasting then you're doing it wrong.

Re: Proposal: Go should have generics

#113

Post by eyko »

Scarbutt wrote: post #9
f2f wrote: post #2

"The intent is not to add generics to Go at this time, but rather to show people what a complete proposal would look like. We hope this will be of help to anyone proposing similar language changes in the future." This started in 2010. Hopefully an illustration that go's developers are not against generics in general, this ought to quell some of the negativity... Pick one of the four proposals you like :)

They better implement something very near by, Swift is coming for them.

Doesn't Swift's tooling leave much to be desired?

Re: Proposal: Go should have generics

#114

Post by ngrilly »

The four proposals linked at the bottom of the page are very interesting, and prove that a lot of work have already been invested in bringing generics to Go. It makes me confident that it will happen one day, when the pieces fit together in a nice way.

Re: Proposal: Go should have generics

#116

Post by XorNot »

kqr wrote: post #102
mattlondon wrote: post #68

I can feel the pain on the Sort issue. I've personally found sorting annoying in Go - I had a bunch of structs representing data entities from a database that all had the same field and I wanted to be able to sort them by this field. Seemed like a LOT of work (basically implementing the same sort that was 99% identical for every struct) or use weird reflection-workarounds to get this to happen. In Java I would not ev…

Completely oblivious about Go, but can you not provide a key function to the sorter that reaches into the struct and pulls out the field you want to sort on? (And presumably explodes in some spectactular fashion if it doesn't exist.) Or is that the "unsafe" reflection you're talking about?

For struct's at least, the answer would be to use an interface method which exposes the key field you want to use. This would be type-safe - you wouldn't be able to pass a non-conforming struct to the sorter.

EDIT: I'd argue what we need in Go is something like a type-class for interfaces, so we can match on fieldsets the struct contains, and not just methods.

Re: Proposal: Go should have generics

#117

Post by idobai »

dom96 wrote: post #107

Maybe instead of adding generics to Go it's time to look into alternative programming languages which already implement generics, like for example Nim.

You forgot that most of golangers are ex-php programmers and students with no experience. Just look at what they're talking about: they think generics are the opposite of simplicity and can make performance and compilation time worse. Meanwhile, Nim has generics with other useful features and has faster compilation time along with better optimization. If google would put 'goto' into go golangers would still use it anyway.

I've tried go a few times and it was full with repetition and boilerplate - felt like java 1.0. It seems like new coders like to repeat themselves more often than learn how to use proven concepts.

Re: Proposal: Go should have generics

#119

Post by [deleted] »

kqr wrote: post #102
mattlondon wrote: post #68

I can feel the pain on the Sort issue. I've personally found sorting annoying in Go - I had a bunch of structs representing data entities from a database that all had the same field and I wanted to be able to sort them by this field. Seemed like a LOT of work (basically implementing the same sort that was 99% identical for every struct) or use weird reflection-workarounds to get this to happen. In Java I would not ev…

Completely oblivious about Go, but can you not provide a key function to the sorter that reaches into the struct and pulls out the field you want to sort on? (And presumably explodes in some spectactular fashion if it doesn't exist.) Or is that the "unsafe" reflection you're talking about?

[deleted]

Re: Proposal: Go should have generics

#120

Post by jcoffland »

trhway wrote: post #105
bigdubs wrote: post #7

After watching Rob Pike's Go Proverbs talk I am pretty convinced generics, as much as some would want it, will never happen. He proselytizes "just copy a little code here and there" quite clearly, which is at odds with the complexity that generics would add.

mental exercise - replace C++ with "generics" and git/kernel/etc with "Go" here http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/c++/linus

Linus is clearly throwing his weight around here. If anyone else were to act this way and use such language we would all call him or her an asshole. Besides his main point is that C++ is not great for low level code. I don't see how this applies here.
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