You're going to have to elaborate in words what your actual problem with my comment is. It's not clear to me why you believe I only read the first sentence, nor in what way I am addressing a strawman. It is perhaps you who have misunderstood my point, rather than the other way around. But, again, you've provided not enough details for me to ascertain this.
Your point is understood, and nobody would disagree with it, but your point is towards a straw man. Nobody ever in the history of computing has made this "argument" you have imagined. If you honestly believe that you didn't make it up arbitrarily, where did you get it from?
> I don't buy the argument that it is some sort of new or esoteric thing for a compiler to allow this
Where I got it from:
> there are very few language that do not see software design as being hierarchical
> Circular references in languages that are hierarchical end up being very awkward.
> There are a small handful of languages that reject all things hierarchical, including the filesystem, but they are few and far between and most probably have never heard of them and they certainly aren't what you are going to find in production
My point being that it is not "awkward" at all for a language to allow circular references between modules. It is only awkward in languages that make it awkward (like Go does). In C (a language over 50 years old) and Java (one of the most widely used languages in the world) it's the most straightforward and natural thing in the world. So it's certainly not correct to say that it is "awkward" in all languages except ones nobody has ever heard of (aka "esoteric", the term I used in my comment).
So yeah I'm still not fully following how I failed to address your comment, or attacked a strawman. Based on what you're saying now, it's clear that you feel I have misunderstood the point you were trying to make. But I can say that it certainly was not based on a single sentence, or a lack of reading on my part. Probably just a confusion of terminology.
Which must mean that you only read the first sentence and dreamt up the rest, or didn't read it at all, else you'd know there was nothing said about circular imports being esoteric. In fact, the comment you originally replied to wouldn't work if they were esoteric.
> It is only awkward in languages that make it awkward (like Go does).
How could it be awkward in Go? It doesn't support circular references. It cannot be awkward – it isn't possible at all! This was already told in earlier comments, so how did you manage to get here not knowing that other than by not reading the comments?
> there was nothing said about circular imports being esoteric
If you aren't saying that circular imports are not common and natural, then don't reply to the statement "circularity between modules is very common and natural" with the statement "In theory, but in practice it isn't"
I have no quarrel with you. If there has been a misunderstanding, then simply correct it and elaborate. That could have been a 2-second interaction - I would have replied "oh, my mistake, I misunderstood what you were saying" and this conversation would be over.
On the other hand, if your goal is just to look smart or superior, or make me look dumb because you believe I'm incapable of reading, then feel free. I have better things to do with my time.
I won't be replying further.
> How could it be awkward in Go? It doesn't support circular references. It cannot be awkward – it isn't possible at all!
There are workarounds. That was the whole point of the beginning of this entire comment chain - me pointing out that these workarounds are worse quality code than if the compiler just supported doing things in a more straightforward way.
> If you aren't saying that circular imports are not common and natural...
Like said, in theory they are natural. In practice they usually aren't, because the languages people use are usually designed around the idea of being hierarchical. That is true of C, and especially true of Java which doubles down on the concept. As before – the part you seemed to not read – circular imports in those languages is possible, but awkward due to their hierarchical view of the world.
> There are workarounds.
You're right that you can achieve a similar effect by hacking up the use of go:linkname, but you're completely bypassing the import system to do that. I don't think that is reasonably considered circular imports. Besides, that approach is not really awkward. That approach is foolish, if not plain stupid.
