> 1. The current proposals for generics are bloated and don't fit properly with our vision for Go.
> 2. We will do heaps and heaps of work over many years until we get something we like.
I suppose repeatedly suffering the pain of not having generics until you finally get enough of your community to admit generics aren't just bloat can be described as "heaps and heaps of work". ;)
I'd love to hear what meaningful differences you think exist between early proposals for Go generics, and later proposals for Go generics. Or Go generics and generics which had existed in other languages for decades, for that matter.
The result of this silly delay will be felt basically forever, because millions of lines of go were written with error codes, which could have been much-less error-prone option types. I'm not sure it would even be a good idea to start using option types at this point because it would create such inconsistencies in codebases.
> Also, AFAIK Go is not a single-pass compiler, at least not in the way I learned about compilers.
Correct! But it was single pass and that was very important because multiple passes were bloat. But multiple passes aren't bloat any more, because now Go has multiple passes and Go doesn't have the bloat of other languages. See how that works?
"The past was alterable. The past never had been altered. Oceania was at war with Eurasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia."
Quoting 1984 when discussing the history of a programming language really detracts from any point you’re trying to make.
It’s not like we’ve seen some massive regression in compiler performance. Circumstances changed, and the Go developers changed their minds. What would you do?
> It’s not like we’ve seen some massive regression in compiler performance. Circumstances changed, and the Go developers changed their minds. What would you do?
1. Yes, we didn't see a massive regression in compiler performance. Which begs the question why they didn't benchmark the options to see that might be the case.
2. Circumstances didn't change. The options for how to implement generics are roughly now what they were in 2009. What we need from languages in Go's sphere, is roughly the same as well.
3. What would I have done? a) Benchmark before making claims about speed. b) Assess features from other languages to see what works and what hasn't (literally nothing about the problems with lacking generics was unforseeable--I was talking about them early on and I'm not some sort of prophet). c) Admit rejecting generics was a mistake instead of pretending they were part of the plan all along.
This conversation feels like it’s in bad faith. Pike wrote in 2013 that generics were a “weakness” in Go [0].
In terms of changed circumstances, obviously something caused them to spend the time and effort to get it done. Maybe they thought modules were more important? Features don’t just magically appear, they need resourcing. The rest of your points are asinine. You mention benchmarking twice which begs the question, how did they maintain good compiler performance for all these years? Was it just luck?
This feels a lot like those conversations where the winners get what they ostensibly wanted, but then they want a pound of flesh to go with it. If you don’t like Go then use something else. The world is full of wonderful programming languages.
> If you don’t like Go then use something else. The world is full of wonderful programming languages.
Yes, exactly--wonderful programming languages whose mind share and funding is stolen by Go, a language with a few famous programmers and Googles' names attached, and almost no actual innovation. In fact, in reinventing the wheel Go seems insistent on re-making all the same mistakes other programming languages already made, and take us backwards. Part of the problem is exemplified in this conversation: the Go community's refusal to even acknowledge mistakes were made.
And sure, I can go use another language, if I can find a job that uses it. Luckily I'm fairly proficient in a few languages which are in no short demand, but none of them are new or interesting.
I would love if there was significant job stability in Elixir, for example. But there isn't. Meanwhile Go has the 11th spot on the IEEE list[1], through no deserving qualities of its own.
I'm not a winner getting what I wanted, and then wanting a pound of flesh in addition. I'm more of a frustrated loser here--sure, I was right about Go needing generics, but it's a Pyrrhic victory, because Go still has a bunch of market share while better languages languish in obscurity. And it's not just me losing: we all lose if we have to use poorly-designed languages and the lower-quality programs which result from them.
Yeah - Go is way up there with… PHP and sh! The horror!
Seriously tho, take a break. Go has strengths and weaknesses like any language; generics is a weirdly specific thing to get hung up on, especially since they admitted it was a weakness and they fixed it.
I mean, Java didn’t have generics for, what, 10 years? And Java generics are - in my opinion - a shitshow. And Java is #5 on your list.
I mean - just look at the top five languages. C doesn’t even have generics, and it’s number 2. C++… not gonna go there. I have never used c# in anger so can’t comment. And I’ve tried to use Python and I hate it for all the reasons I enjoy Go - and it’s number 1.
So what? Each of these languages fills a niche. It’s not worth getting upset about it.
I’ve been developing software for a very long time, and I’ve forgotten more languages than most people ever learn. I like Go and I think they have made perfectly reasonable trade offs.
You’re welcome to your opinion, but complaining about a moderately popular language stealing mind share is kinda weird.
> Seriously tho, take a break. Go has strengths and weaknesses like any language; generics is a weirdly specific thing to get hung up on, especially since they admitted it was a weakness and they fixed it.
It's too late, some problems caused by not having generics are unfixable at this point. As I said before, we're stuck with error codes for the forseeable future, because they chose to go with 1980s solutions to problems and not prioritize generics when everybody with a brain said they were needed.
> I mean - just look at the top five languages. C doesn’t even have generics, and it’s number 2. C++… not gonna go there. I have never used c# in anger so can’t comment. And I’ve tried to use Python and I hate it for all the reasons I enjoy Go - and it’s number 1.
Yes, those languages have problems. My point isn't to give you the opportunity to point the finger at other people, it's that we need better languages. This is why it's so fucking irritating that people latched onto Go, instead of one of the many amazing languages which isn't total shite. We need languages that have fixed these problems, but what we got was another shite language which learned almost nothing from the past.
At least C and Python have the excuse that they are products of their time. At least they learned from and fixed the mistakes of their predecessors. Go brings 0 innovation to the table: its best features, like coroutines and message queues, have existed in other languages for decades, and meanwhile they've made obvious mistakes that other languages already made and learned from. If I'm going to have to write code in a shite language, I might as well use one of the ones that knows and admits its problems, and has well-known solutions to them.
Yes, many of those languages made mistakes--a minimum of 10 years before Go existed. So why didn't Go learn from those mistakes?
> I mean, Java didn’t have generics for, what, 10 years? And Java generics are - in my opinion - a shitshow. And Java is #5 on your list.
My list? Bruh, this is a list of the most popular languages list. I didn't pick these, and I wouldn't pick those if I was making a list of the best languages. If you think that's what I'm saying, you're completely missing the point.
What you seem to be missing about Java is that their generics were a big step up from C++ templates--they were an improvement when they came out. They made mistakes, and C# learned from them, and brought in a better version of generics. You know, progress! Unlike Go which went with error codes and went with C-style casting and/or code generation which were already obviously problematic in the 80s, in 2009. Great language you got there, 25 years behind when it started.
> You’re welcome to your opinion, but complaining about a moderately popular language stealing mind share is kinda weird.
And you're welcome to yours, but defending an overhyped, innovation-less language that doesn't deserve its popularity is kinda weird too. We're both just wasting time.
> 2. We will do heaps and heaps of work over many years until we get something we like.
I suppose repeatedly suffering the pain of not having generics until you finally get enough of your community to admit generics aren't just bloat can be described as "heaps and heaps of work". ;)
I'd love to hear what meaningful differences you think exist between early proposals for Go generics, and later proposals for Go generics. Or Go generics and generics which had existed in other languages for decades, for that matter.
The result of this silly delay will be felt basically forever, because millions of lines of go were written with error codes, which could have been much-less error-prone option types. I'm not sure it would even be a good idea to start using option types at this point because it would create such inconsistencies in codebases.
> Also, AFAIK Go is not a single-pass compiler, at least not in the way I learned about compilers.
Correct! But it was single pass and that was very important because multiple passes were bloat. But multiple passes aren't bloat any more, because now Go has multiple passes and Go doesn't have the bloat of other languages. See how that works?
"The past was alterable. The past never had been altered. Oceania was at war with Eurasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia."