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I wish people would quit the evangelical crap like that because you can find random bad design patterns and pitfalls in any language. At the end of the day gene

I wish people would quit the evangelical crap like that because you can find random bad design patterns and pitfalls in any language. At the end of the day general purpose languages have to fit a large criteria of needs for a wide criteria of developers while evolving and maturing along the process. So there will always be instances where a decision seems right at the time but later turns out to be bad. And even if you take Apple's approach of breaking your language with each iteration (as they do with Swift) you still end up with lots of wasted developer time porting your code with each new release. Honestly if you aren't a skilled enough programmer to navigate the nuances of any particular language then you really are no better than kids playing in drag-and-drop environments like Scratch.

mrkgnao 9y ago
Does this look like a design mistake or a bit of oversight? There is no excuse why one should have to do result, err := Foo() if err != nil { ... } over and over again in a language designed after 2000. The usual argument is that Go's simplistic design "reduces complexity", yet explaining something basic as why the error handling system doesn't behave the way one expects needs you to know how the compiler represents interface types. The next decade will see Go adding in most or all the complexity real-world software asks for, without ever admitting that maybe it should've been supported from the beginning without the hacky workarounds. > Honestly if you aren't a skilled enough programmer to navigate the nuances of any particular language then you really are no better than kids[...] Even though the bit in italics is pretty much the opposite of the "Go/JS pitch", I'll bite. Sure, learning to code at a high level means you need to take time to learn things (which is the opposite of the pitch). I just don't get why teaching yourself to "navigate the [brokenness]" of a language that was out-of-date the day it was released is preferable to learning to write in an expressive language that won't artificially handicap you or provide you with an arsenal of footguns. In all the time you were casting to and from interface{}, you could be exploring and using powerful and practical new ideas that make it less likely you'll suffer for failing to check one of those "err"s.
- laumars 9y ago
  > Does this look like a design mistake or a bit of oversight? Honestly, I don't mind error handling in Go. I've used a wide variety of languages in production systems (I've lost count but it's more than a dozen) and I've found Go to be surprisingly good at giving detailed, context aware breakdowns of where issues arise and allowing me to easily handle them. Sure there are a thousand different ways to do this and Go picked the ugliest, but in spite of that I've found it to be surprisingly effective - even in the more complex projects I've written like murex (my alternative UNIX $SHELL) and the odd Linux FUSE file system I've written to scratch a particular itch. In fact for as many complaints like yours I've read there are also as many seasoned developers complementing Go's error handling. So I really think that particular issue is more a matter of personal taste rather than poor language design. However I'm _not_ going to defend the nil thing nor how interface{}'s are (ab)used as an alternative to generics. Those _are_ just bad design choices. But for all of Go's sins, I still find myself more productive writing Go code than I have in any other language for a long time (probably since writing Pascal in Borland's Turbo Pascal back in the 90s). Hence why I defend Go. I can understand idealistic opinions about language design (Go is opinionated too after all) but frankly what really matters is a developers ability to get an idea into something executable. And I feel a lot of the complaints about Go really miss the point about how productive that language is to a great many people and without sacrificing too much control to be useful in a practical sense.
- sagichmal 9y ago
  The error handling idiom in Go is one of its strongest properties. Forcing developers to accommodate the error path inline and at each callsite makes code resilient and robust. It would stand to benefit from a Maybe feature, but even as-is it's a huge net positive versus e.g. exceptions. People who complain about it don't grok the Go ethos. That's fine, it's not for everyone.
- dullgiulio 9y ago
  You are doing it wrong. You should check if there is an error (not the other way around) and return early. How about you study the language a bit more in depth (including estabilished idioms) before pontificating about it?
Ar-Curunir 9y ago
Stuff like null or nil is a problem that's been identified for decades, and there are relatively widely-used type system approaches that solve it very nicely (sum types). It's not okay in a modern programming language to repeat the mistakes of decades-old ones in the name of "simplicity".

mrkgnao 9y ago

Does this look like a design mistake or a bit of oversight? There is no excuse why one should have to do result, err := Foo() if err != nil { ... } over and over again in a language designed after 2000. The usual argument is that Go's simplistic design "reduces complexity", yet explaining something basic as why the error handling system doesn't behave the way one expects needs you to know how the compiler represents interface types. The next decade will see Go adding in most or all the complexity real-world software asks for, without ever admitting that maybe it should've been supported from the beginning without the hacky workarounds. > Honestly if you aren't a skilled enough programmer to navigate the nuances of any particular language then you really are no better than kids[...] Even though the bit in italics is pretty much the opposite of the "Go/JS pitch", I'll bite. Sure, learning to code at a high level means you need to take time to learn things (which is the opposite of the pitch). I just don't get why teaching yourself to "navigate the [brokenness]" of a language that was out-of-date the day it was released is preferable to learning to write in an expressive language that won't artificially handicap you or provide you with an arsenal of footguns. In all the time you were casting to and from interface{}, you could be exploring and using powerful and practical new ideas that make it less likely you'll suffer for failing to check one of those "err"s.

laumars 9y ago
> Does this look like a design mistake or a bit of oversight? Honestly, I don't mind error handling in Go. I've used a wide variety of languages in production systems (I've lost count but it's more than a dozen) and I've found Go to be surprisingly good at giving detailed, context aware breakdowns of where issues arise and allowing me to easily handle them. Sure there are a thousand different ways to do this and Go picked the ugliest, but in spite of that I've found it to be surprisingly effective - even in the more complex projects I've written like murex (my alternative UNIX $SHELL) and the odd Linux FUSE file system I've written to scratch a particular itch. In fact for as many complaints like yours I've read there are also as many seasoned developers complementing Go's error handling. So I really think that particular issue is more a matter of personal taste rather than poor language design. However I'm _not_ going to defend the nil thing nor how interface{}'s are (ab)used as an alternative to generics. Those _are_ just bad design choices. But for all of Go's sins, I still find myself more productive writing Go code than I have in any other language for a long time (probably since writing Pascal in Borland's Turbo Pascal back in the 90s). Hence why I defend Go. I can understand idealistic opinions about language design (Go is opinionated too after all) but frankly what really matters is a developers ability to get an idea into something executable. And I feel a lot of the complaints about Go really miss the point about how productive that language is to a great many people and without sacrificing too much control to be useful in a practical sense.
sagichmal 9y ago
The error handling idiom in Go is one of its strongest properties. Forcing developers to accommodate the error path inline and at each callsite makes code resilient and robust. It would stand to benefit from a Maybe feature, but even as-is it's a huge net positive versus e.g. exceptions. People who complain about it don't grok the Go ethos. That's fine, it's not for everyone.
dullgiulio 9y ago
You are doing it wrong. You should check if there is an error (not the other way around) and return early. How about you study the language a bit more in depth (including estabilished idioms) before pontificating about it?

Ar-Curunir 9y ago

Stuff like null or nil is a problem that's been identified for decades, and there are relatively widely-used type system approaches that solve it very nicely (sum types). It's not okay in a modern programming language to repeat the mistakes of decades-old ones in the name of "simplicity".