4 ms·

Generics are useless when there is no way to integrate them with your rest of the code. As golang has no instanceof or typeof keyword, you practically you cann

Generics are useless when there is no way to integrate them with your rest of the code. As golang has no instanceof or typeof keyword, you practically you cannot use a method that uses multiple types as arguments without having to use the reflect API, just to have an if/else branch on what to do with that argument. The things that I mentioned are from another point of view where language designers and implementers decided to implement the interactions with their data types in a different way, by providing overloadable methods with different function signatures for the same function name whereas in golang everything must be "namespaced" in a sub sub sub package. Good luck finding the right methodology where to sort in a method that can handle two different structs. If they're nested it's not even possible cause golang's dependency resolver doesn't allow cyclic dependencies. Parsing html5 in golang is a nightmare, and I've realized that this language is not made for such a use case.

kgeist 4y ago
>As golang has no instanceof or typeof keyword, you practically you cannot use a method that uses multiple types as arguments without having to use the reflect API You don't have to use reflection, there are typecasts: "value, ok := arg.(MyType)" You can also switch on a type. How is it different from instanceof in practice?
- cookiengineer 4y ago
  The point of described scenario was to have a _different_ if/elseif branch, and not the identical behaviour for one struct type. If item instanceof HouseStruct {} Elseif item instanceof ContainerStruct {} With your suggested solution you end up with OOP fatigue and GenericBuildingImplementationStruct which is probably not what golang wanted to embrace with their type system.
  - kgeist 4y ago
    I'm not sure I follow what you mean. In Go the equivalent to your example is: switch val := item.(type) { case HouseStruct: case ContainerStruct: }
    - erik_seaberg 4y ago
      Doesn’t type switch require an interface value? Go tries not to add boxing-like overhead to generics.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]

kgeist 4y ago

>As golang has no instanceof or typeof keyword, you practically you cannot use a method that uses multiple types as arguments without having to use the reflect API You don't have to use reflection, there are typecasts: "value, ok := arg.(MyType)" You can also switch on a type. How is it different from instanceof in practice?

cookiengineer 4y ago
The point of described scenario was to have a _different_ if/elseif branch, and not the identical behaviour for one struct type. If item instanceof HouseStruct {} Elseif item instanceof ContainerStruct {} With your suggested solution you end up with OOP fatigue and GenericBuildingImplementationStruct which is probably not what golang wanted to embrace with their type system.
- kgeist 4y ago
  I'm not sure I follow what you mean. In Go the equivalent to your example is: switch val := item.(type) { case HouseStruct: case ContainerStruct: }
  - erik_seaberg 4y ago
    Doesn’t type switch require an interface value? Go tries not to add boxing-like overhead to generics.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]