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> Neither is there data for % of all programmers will move to Go if Generics are available. I never said that. It is you who used that kind of argument like th

by camus2 10y ago

> Neither is there data for % of all programmers will move to Go if Generics are available. I never said that. It is you who used that kind of argument like there was any truth to it. There is none. > Sure, just like you don't understand that(...) I never said that. You keep on making stuff up. > It is even better by having more programing languages with preferred feature set. I don't think adding more programming languages to a project makes that project more maintainable and readable, it doesn't make sense. You're not going to convince me that juggling with multiple programming languages on a daily basis is "even better". It isn't. > There is no need to decide on behalf of programmers on what concepts they should find difficult and what not. For example some people using Rust find borrow checker really difficult to grasp some find it an elegant and obvious way to track objects. There is no need to decide that a feature you wouldn't even use yourself is bad either. Nobody would force you to use generics.

mos_basik 10y ago
>nobody would force you to use generics Yes and no. In a couple years, a Go developer gets hired at a shop and realizes on the first day "oh snap, these people have a years old codebase that uses generics everywhere and I'm stuck with it." Is he being forced to use them? Can he leave if he cares more about generics than his paycheck? Sure. Can you withold the combo to your safe from the home invader if you care more about what's inside it than your daughter he's pointing a gun at? Sure. I don't think it's incomprehensible that GP prefers that a language remain simple and opinionated for the sake of what one might call "cross-developer" code. Someone up the thread a ways mentioned 1980s C++, object oriented C++ and functional C++ as examples of how disjoint different styles of a single language can be when its building blocks allow it to be sufficiently flexible/agnostic. Another example that comes to mind is Lisp, where its ability to create macros and abstractions mean a developer can, if he chooses, essentially write his own language per project (as far as its legibility to newcomers is concerned). C++and Lisp are both powerful, of course. But power isn't everything. Jira is much more customizable and flexible than Trello, but Trello is clearly doing quite well with the small subset of Jira features that a large chunk of the market is satisfied with.
- kazinator 10y ago
  Indeed, the whole "use only what you think is good" from a programming language is a fallacious argument. Or, at least, it only applies to the lone wolf developer who writes everything by him/herself. Knuth fell into making this mistake in the 1993 Computer Literacy Bookshops interview, in which he responded thus on the topic of C: DK: I think C has a lot of features that are very important. The way C handles pointers, for example, was a brilliant innovation; it solved a lot of problems that we had before in data structuring and made the programs look good afterwards. C isn't the perfect language, no language is, but I think it has a lot of virtues, and you can avoid the parts you don't like. Yes, you can avoid the parts you don't like, if you're like Knuth, working on one program by yourself.

by camus2 10y ago

mos_basik 10y ago

>nobody would force you to use generics Yes and no. In a couple years, a Go developer gets hired at a shop and realizes on the first day "oh snap, these people have a years old codebase that uses generics everywhere and I'm stuck with it." Is he being forced to use them? Can he leave if he cares more about generics than his paycheck? Sure. Can you withold the combo to your safe from the home invader if you care more about what's inside it than your daughter he's pointing a gun at? Sure. I don't think it's incomprehensible that GP prefers that a language remain simple and opinionated for the sake of what one might call "cross-developer" code. Someone up the thread a ways mentioned 1980s C++, object oriented C++ and functional C++ as examples of how disjoint different styles of a single language can be when its building blocks allow it to be sufficiently flexible/agnostic. Another example that comes to mind is Lisp, where its ability to create macros and abstractions mean a developer can, if he chooses, essentially write his own language per project (as far as its legibility to newcomers is concerned). C++and Lisp are both powerful, of course. But power isn't everything. Jira is much more customizable and flexible than Trello, but Trello is clearly doing quite well with the small subset of Jira features that a large chunk of the market is satisfied with.

kazinator 10y ago
Indeed, the whole "use only what you think is good" from a programming language is a fallacious argument. Or, at least, it only applies to the lone wolf developer who writes everything by him/herself. Knuth fell into making this mistake in the 1993 Computer Literacy Bookshops interview, in which he responded thus on the topic of C: DK: I think C has a lot of features that are very important. The way C handles pointers, for example, was a brilliant innovation; it solved a lot of problems that we had before in data structuring and made the programs look good afterwards. C isn't the perfect language, no language is, but I think it has a lot of virtues, and you can avoid the parts you don't like. Yes, you can avoid the parts you don't like, if you're like Knuth, working on one program by yourself.