4 ms·

For me the big takeaway is: generics are pretty much guaranteed to happen within a year or two. > When asked about the biggest challenges to their own personal

by kjksf 9y ago

For me the big takeaway is: generics are pretty much guaranteed to happen within a year or two. > When asked about the biggest challenges to their own personal use of Go, users clearly conveyed that lack of dependency management and lack of generics were their two biggest issues, consistent with 2016. In 2017 we laid a foundation to be able to address these issues > These two issues will continue to be a major focus of the project through 2018

pjmlp 9y ago
Until I see an actual roadmap for it, I won't be expecting much out of it, given the usual reaction when they get discussed at gonuts.
deckarep 9y ago
That’s a bold statement...I’m not holding my breath. We still haven’t seen a solid proposal and the work required would likely be even more monumental after the fact.
- icholy 9y ago
  There have been a bunch.
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  Generics are well understood ATM. Once they decide on something, I don't think the work required would be monumental, unless they try something crazy.
  - skybrian 9y ago
    Judging by package management, I wouldn't be surprised if it took another five years to figure out a plan and they did something controversially different from everyone else. Which isn't a bad thing, necessarily.
    - xzi00s09f8098fd 9y ago
      Not sure what you mean by this. rsc has recently blogged in much detail about the package management situation, basing his work on existing solutions. He seems to specially eye rust's cargo. The blogs have been on HN several times. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16421966 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16421966 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16434973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16434973
peterevans 9y ago
I recall reading something from some of the language developers who had indicated that their worry with generics was whether they could do it right. I inferred that to mean, whether they could do it in a way that felt as simple as the rest of the language does. I would guess generics, when it lands, would look syntactically similar to the way channel type declarations look; you can have "chan int", so perhaps you would have "vector int". That feels the most intuitive and Go-ish to me. Channels require special syntax to work with, but with generics, I imagine you'd want to make use of interfaces. I can see a bunch of ways of doing it—but none I could guarantee would end up in the finished product! But I do think generics land at some point. The unfortunate thing is there's a sense going around that Go doesn't have generics because the language authors somehow know better than everyone else; if anything, I think they have an abundance of caution that some other language developers have lacked.

by kjksf 9y ago

pjmlp 9y ago

Until I see an actual roadmap for it, I won't be expecting much out of it, given the usual reaction when they get discussed at gonuts.

deckarep 9y ago

That’s a bold statement...I’m not holding my breath. We still haven’t seen a solid proposal and the work required would likely be even more monumental after the fact.

icholy 9y ago
There have been a bunch.
seanmcdirmid 9y ago
Generics are well understood ATM. Once they decide on something, I don't think the work required would be monumental, unless they try something crazy.
- skybrian 9y ago
  Judging by package management, I wouldn't be surprised if it took another five years to figure out a plan and they did something controversially different from everyone else. Which isn't a bad thing, necessarily.
  - xzi00s09f8098fd 9y ago
    Not sure what you mean by this. rsc has recently blogged in much detail about the package management situation, basing his work on existing solutions. He seems to specially eye rust's cargo. The blogs have been on HN several times. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16421966 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16421966 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16434973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16434973

peterevans 9y ago

I recall reading something from some of the language developers who had indicated that their worry with generics was whether they could do it right. I inferred that to mean, whether they could do it in a way that felt as simple as the rest of the language does. I would guess generics, when it lands, would look syntactically similar to the way channel type declarations look; you can have "chan int", so perhaps you would have "vector int". That feels the most intuitive and Go-ish to me. Channels require special syntax to work with, but with generics, I imagine you'd want to make use of interfaces. I can see a bunch of ways of doing it—but none I could guarantee would end up in the finished product! But I do think generics land at some point. The unfortunate thing is there's a sense going around that Go doesn't have generics because the language authors somehow know better than everyone else; if anything, I think they have an abundance of caution that some other language developers have lacked.