5 ms·

Finally. Better late than never. I have to write a lot of Go code at $BIGCORP and keep reaching for generic helper functions like Keys or Map or Filter or Conta

by adamch 6y ago

Finally. Better late than never. I have to write a lot of Go code at $BIGCORP and keep reaching for generic helper functions like Keys or Map or Filter or Contains. This is going to make my code much more readable.

nemo1618 6y ago
Will it really? Old: sum := 0 for _, x := range xs { sum += xs } New: slices.Reduce(xs, 0, func(i, j int) int { return i + j })
- dilap 6y ago
  Yeah no real gain for that case, but for something like filter, definitely a win.
- hombre_fatal 6y ago
  That's the most compelling example you could come up with as someone who presumably writes Go? Reversing a slice of T. Copy and pasting this: for i := len(a)/2 - 1; i >= 0; i-- { opp := len(a) - 1 - i a[i], a[opp] = a[opp], a[i] } New: reverse(a) Or generic versions of these: https://gobyexample.com/collection-functions https://gobyexample.com/collection-functions
  - adamch 6y ago
    Yep, this is exactly the use case I was talking about.
- TheCoelacanth 6y ago
  New: slices.Sum()
- reissbaker 6y ago
  This is an argument I've seen played out in other language communities. In the JS/TypeScript world, the current evolving consensus is "most of the functional programming methods improve readability, except reduce, which is usually worse than a for loop." I think the other replies to your comment point out the improvements that non-reduce-based versions of the code would bring, but I wanted to specifically call out reduce as being a pretty awkward function in other languages as well. So I think it's not a strong argument against generics (and the OP didn't mention wanting it in the first place); by and large functional methods like map, filter, reverse, etc are more readable; reduce is the exception that often isn't. I wrote a fair bit of production Go code in my past, and missed many functional programming patterns. Didn't really miss reduce though. I'm glad that it seems like the ones I missed will become possible with this generics proposal. And reduce isn't horribly unreadable, it's just a slight degradation compared to a for loop IMO. And the other functions are a large improvement.

by adamch 6y ago

nemo1618 6y ago

Will it really? Old: sum := 0 for _, x := range xs { sum += xs } New: slices.Reduce(xs, 0, func(i, j int) int { return i + j })

dilap 6y ago
Yeah no real gain for that case, but for something like filter, definitely a win.
hombre_fatal 6y ago
That's the most compelling example you could come up with as someone who presumably writes Go? Reversing a slice of T. Copy and pasting this: for i := len(a)/2 - 1; i >= 0; i-- { opp := len(a) - 1 - i a[i], a[opp] = a[opp], a[i] } New: reverse(a) Or generic versions of these: https://gobyexample.com/collection-functions https://gobyexample.com/collection-functions
- adamch 6y ago
  Yep, this is exactly the use case I was talking about.
TheCoelacanth 6y ago
New: slices.Sum()
reissbaker 6y ago
This is an argument I've seen played out in other language communities. In the JS/TypeScript world, the current evolving consensus is "most of the functional programming methods improve readability, except reduce, which is usually worse than a for loop." I think the other replies to your comment point out the improvements that non-reduce-based versions of the code would bring, but I wanted to specifically call out reduce as being a pretty awkward function in other languages as well. So I think it's not a strong argument against generics (and the OP didn't mention wanting it in the first place); by and large functional methods like map, filter, reverse, etc are more readable; reduce is the exception that often isn't. I wrote a fair bit of production Go code in my past, and missed many functional programming patterns. Didn't really miss reduce though. I'm glad that it seems like the ones I missed will become possible with this generics proposal. And reduce isn't horribly unreadable, it's just a slight degradation compared to a for loop IMO. And the other functions are a large improvement.