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Didn't one of Go's founders specifically say they didn't want to take advantage of existing type theory, in the name of "simplicity"? Meanwhile Rust is building
by andrewflnr 5y ago
Didn't one of Go's founders specifically say they didn't want to take advantage of existing type theory, in the name of "simplicity"? Meanwhile Rust is building off the ML/OCaml tradition. No wonder the language building on a 40 year body of work feels more consistent.
- srer 5y agoIt's not from a founder, but I like this paragraph from the preface of The Go Programming Language: Go has enough of a type system to avoid most of the careless mistakes that plague programmers in dynamic languages, but it has a simpler type system than comparable typed languages. This approach can sometimes lead to isolated pockets of "untyped" programming within a broader framework of types, and Go programmers do not go to the lengths that C++ or Haskell programmers do to express safety properties as type-based proofs. But in practice Go gives programmers much of the safety and run-time performance benefits of a relatively strong type system without the burden of a complex one. I happen to like this idea of gaining safety through the type system. Sometime's when Go's frustrating me I have to remember - it's that I'm be expecting and achieve something it just isn't intended for.