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Interestingly, the term "reference type" has been removed from the Go spec in 2013: https://github.com/golang/go/commit/b34f0551387fcf043d65cd7d96a0214956578f94

by eliben 9y ago

Interestingly, the term "reference type" has been removed from the Go spec in 2013: https://github.com/golang/go/commit/b34f0551387fcf043d65cd7d96a0214956578f94 https://github.com/golang/go/commit/b34f0551387fcf043d65cd7d... Yet some semi-official sources (like The Go Programming Language book) do refer to channels as "reference types". TBH, I find cheney's post not fully useful without explaining what does happen behind the scenes in maps so that passing them by value doesn't incur large copies.

iand 9y ago
A map is a tiny struct containing a pointer to the bucket storage. It's always cheap to pass a map value.
- eliben 9y ago
  Right. I'm saying the linked blog post can be improved significantly by spending a paragraph on explaining this. Otherwise it just sounds like magic.