5 ms·

This is what policies are for, not entirely new languages: if you don't like generics and don't trust the end developers at your organization to not use them in

by saurik 5y ago

This is what policies are for, not entirely new languages: if you don't like generics and don't trust the end developers at your organization to not use them in stupid ways you should maybe (I say "maybe" as this problem just seems so lame of a problem to have: if your army of end developers can't be trusted then you should fire them and hire some real developers) have a way to turn off generics that isn't "use a language that doesn't support them at all" (which I will note is itself nothing more than a policy decision anyway).

alophawen 5y ago
I predict someone will boil up a linter tool that would block generics in your CI.
- majewsky 5y ago
  I also predict it will be practically useless since those five libraries that you absolutely depend on will all be rewritten to take advantage of generics, and then you're left with the lose-lose situation of "maintain a fork of the last non-generics version myself" or "get stuck on the last non-generics version and never receive security updates again".
  - alophawen 5y ago
    Not sure why you would run checks on your dependencies rather than your code.
jshen 5y ago
I’m not talking about generics specifically. I’ve been coding for decades. Go is by far the easiest language I’ve used when it comes to jumping into an arbitrary code base and making sense of it. Again I ask, why insist that go become the same as all the other languages when you can just use one of those? Why demand less diversity?
- pie_flavor 5y ago
  Which part of this is not generalizable to literally every conceivable complaint about a language whether it makes sense or not? Why would I want diversity between languages where you do have to copy-paste lots of boilerplate, and languages where you don't? If there was a good, simple-in-the-Go-way solution to this problem other than generics, feel free to suggest it, but repeating 'why care about anything ever' is just pure noise.
  - jshen 5y ago
    As I've said, this isn't about generics specifically. There are a whole lot of us who find Go code bases far easier to read and understand that most other languages. We believe there is a value to the language's simplicity, and we want to keep it that way. We've written Go for years, and haven't missed many of these features you want. In fact, we think there is a decent chance that Go code bases are easier to jump into and understand BECAUSE of it's simplicity. You have many many choices that work the way you want. Go use them, why try to dictate to us that we can't have the choice we want? We disagree about the value of these things, and their trade-offs. That's what diversity is for, you have languages that work your way. Why insist that one of the few that doesn't has become like all the others?
    - pie_flavor 5y ago
      You are posting a criticism of the feature, in response to a comment that is an answer to that criticism. If your code did not use generics, it can continue to not use generics. If you did not interact with any libraries whose need for generics was apparent, you can continue to do that too and the libraries you were using aren't going anywhere. But just because you don't interact with a problem doesn't mean it doesn't exist, and the problem has historically been solved with dynamic downcasting, code generation, or copy-pasting, all of which result in codebases far harder to read and understand than most other languages. For these problems, you are not trading off generic code vs simple code, you are trading off generic code vs incomprehensible code. It is great that you have never needed a tree-map instead of a hash-map, but many have. Go's simplicity is in many ways it being the spiritual successor to C, and even C has generics nowadays because they are an enormous value add.
alex_sf 5y ago
Policies don't work. It's why we lean on process in fields where correctness matters, e.g. aviation.
- reegnz 5y ago
  Policies do work if you have a process to enforce those policies. Without policy how do you define the process? "Good intentions never work, you need good mechanisms to make anything happen." http://nickfoy.com/blog/2018/4/7/good-intentions-dont-work http://nickfoy.com/blog/2018/4/7/good-intentions-dont-work
  - alex_sf 5y ago
    By designing systems that encourage or enforce the correct action.

by saurik 5y ago

alophawen 5y ago

I predict someone will boil up a linter tool that would block generics in your CI.

majewsky 5y ago
I also predict it will be practically useless since those five libraries that you absolutely depend on will all be rewritten to take advantage of generics, and then you're left with the lose-lose situation of "maintain a fork of the last non-generics version myself" or "get stuck on the last non-generics version and never receive security updates again".
- alophawen 5y ago
  Not sure why you would run checks on your dependencies rather than your code.

jshen 5y ago

I’m not talking about generics specifically. I’ve been coding for decades. Go is by far the easiest language I’ve used when it comes to jumping into an arbitrary code base and making sense of it. Again I ask, why insist that go become the same as all the other languages when you can just use one of those? Why demand less diversity?

pie_flavor 5y ago
Which part of this is not generalizable to literally every conceivable complaint about a language whether it makes sense or not? Why would I want diversity between languages where you do have to copy-paste lots of boilerplate, and languages where you don't? If there was a good, simple-in-the-Go-way solution to this problem other than generics, feel free to suggest it, but repeating 'why care about anything ever' is just pure noise.
- jshen 5y ago
  As I've said, this isn't about generics specifically. There are a whole lot of us who find Go code bases far easier to read and understand that most other languages. We believe there is a value to the language's simplicity, and we want to keep it that way. We've written Go for years, and haven't missed many of these features you want. In fact, we think there is a decent chance that Go code bases are easier to jump into and understand BECAUSE of it's simplicity. You have many many choices that work the way you want. Go use them, why try to dictate to us that we can't have the choice we want? We disagree about the value of these things, and their trade-offs. That's what diversity is for, you have languages that work your way. Why insist that one of the few that doesn't has become like all the others?
  - pie_flavor 5y ago
    You are posting a criticism of the feature, in response to a comment that is an answer to that criticism. If your code did not use generics, it can continue to not use generics. If you did not interact with any libraries whose need for generics was apparent, you can continue to do that too and the libraries you were using aren't going anywhere. But just because you don't interact with a problem doesn't mean it doesn't exist, and the problem has historically been solved with dynamic downcasting, code generation, or copy-pasting, all of which result in codebases far harder to read and understand than most other languages. For these problems, you are not trading off generic code vs simple code, you are trading off generic code vs incomprehensible code. It is great that you have never needed a tree-map instead of a hash-map, but many have. Go's simplicity is in many ways it being the spiritual successor to C, and even C has generics nowadays because they are an enormous value add.

alex_sf 5y ago

Policies don't work. It's why we lean on process in fields where correctness matters, e.g. aviation.

reegnz 5y ago
Policies do work if you have a process to enforce those policies. Without policy how do you define the process? "Good intentions never work, you need good mechanisms to make anything happen." http://nickfoy.com/blog/2018/4/7/good-intentions-dont-work http://nickfoy.com/blog/2018/4/7/good-intentions-dont-work
- alex_sf 5y ago
  By designing systems that encourage or enforce the correct action.