4 ms·

Wow, I like the selling points: * Strong modular system and built in testing. * Global state is not allowed. * There's no null and everything is automaticall

by didip 8y ago

Wow, I like the selling points: * Strong modular system and built in testing. * Global state is not allowed. * There's no null and everything is automatically initialized to empty values. No more null reference crashes. * Variables are immutable by default and functions are partially pure: function arguments are always immutable, only method's receiver can be changed. * Thread safety and guaranteed absence of data races. You no longer have to constantly ask yourself: "Is this thread safe?" Everything is! No perfomance costs either. For example, if you are using a hash map in a concurrent function, a thread safe hash map is used automatically. Otherwise a faster single thread hash map is used. * Strict automatic code formatting. It goes further than gofmt and even has a set of rules for empty lines to ensure truly one coding style. Especially eye catching is the 2 mode of every data structure. Switch to thread-safe if there are concurrent access.

duncan-donuts 8y ago
For no null is he saying that everything is just initialized to a default value (int=0, str=“”, etc)? I’m thrown off by, “everything is initialized to empty values” because I don’t see how empty and null are different.
- eridius 8y ago
  The difference is all values are valid. In C, you can't know that a `char *` is safe to dereference.
  - dkersten 8y ago
    Garbage but valid values are, in my opinion, much harder errors to catch because they can silently corrupt data, than a simple crash/null pointer exception. I'm not a fan of null (option types seem better -- which V does say it has), but defaulting to an "empty" value isn't the answer IMHO as it makes it much harder to debug by obscuring that there's a problem at all. You may not realise that the 0 is actually an "empty" and not a valid 0 until you realise all of your calculations are wrong, months later.
- amedvednikov 8y ago
  Right, the only syntax for variable declaration is a := val, so you are forced to initialize variables.

by didip 8y ago

duncan-donuts 8y ago

For no null is he saying that everything is just initialized to a default value (int=0, str=“”, etc)? I’m thrown off by, “everything is initialized to empty values” because I don’t see how empty and null are different.

eridius 8y ago
The difference is all values are valid. In C, you can't know that a `char *` is safe to dereference.
- dkersten 8y ago
  Garbage but valid values are, in my opinion, much harder errors to catch because they can silently corrupt data, than a simple crash/null pointer exception. I'm not a fan of null (option types seem better -- which V does say it has), but defaulting to an "empty" value isn't the answer IMHO as it makes it much harder to debug by obscuring that there's a problem at all. You may not realise that the 0 is actually an "empty" and not a valid 0 until you realise all of your calculations are wrong, months later.
amedvednikov 8y ago
Right, the only syntax for variable declaration is a := val, so you are forced to initialize variables.