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Ian Lance Taylor worked on generics for like a decade, and the final design was heavily based on the Featherweight Go paper, which had formal proofs of the desi
by truffdog 4y ago
Ian Lance Taylor worked on generics for like a decade, and the final design was heavily based on the Featherweight Go paper, which had formal proofs of the design given a simplified version of the go language. This is a very odd complaint around this feature.
- grumpyprole 4y agoYes retrofitting is hard. However, "Generics", also known as parametric polymorphism is well understood and goes back to Milners ML from the 70s.
- bborud 4y agoWhile something may be well understood in an academic sense doesn't mean that the application of that understanding to implementation humans will take a liking to is well understood. If you look at the programming language landscape I think one wouldn't be unreasonable in pointing out that very little is understood in terms of how you go from good ideas to widely adopted language. What affects reality is important.
- grumpyprole 4y ago> doesn't mean that the application of that understanding to implementation humans will take a liking to is well understood. I really like how ML implements it, does that make me somehow less human?
- bborud 4y agoWhat you like or don't like isn't really the point. The point is that it isn't unimportant when judging how "good" a language is to take into account how many people are willing to use it. It is hard to argue that a language is "good" when a negligible fraction of developers are willing to use it.
- grumpyprole 4y agoAs Alan Kay said, the industry is a pop culture, driven by marketing not science. I'm still going to argue for good ideas though.
- bborud 4y agoIf one is to come up with an excuse for not understanding people, one should pick something that at least sounds plausible.