3 ms·

> And sure, plenty of people will tell if you do it "right" you'll have no issues. Go is inspired a lot by CSP, and allows you to apply CSP calculus when using

> And sure, plenty of people will tell if you do it "right" you'll have no issues. Go is inspired a lot by CSP, and allows you to apply CSP calculus when using goroutines and channels. It doesn't make it impossible to make mistakes, but it does give you tools needed to reason about your concurrent program, which is more than can be said of most other languages' concurrency support.

dontlaugh 3y ago
And yet goroutines share the same address space, don’t have a good way for the parent to wait for them and even panic silently. There’s a reason many projects ban the go keyword in favour of a wrapper that fixes some of this. Go requires constant vigilance, sadly.
- bheadmaster 3y ago
  Yes, as I said, Go doesn't make it impossible to make mistakes. It doesn't hold your hand and slap you when you go off-road. But saying it "requires constant vigilance" is an overstatement. As long as you put a little bit of thought in the concurrent code you're writing, it's very easy to do things right. Data races are easy to avoid if you only transfer ownership by sending pointers through channels.
  - dontlaugh 3y ago
    It would’ve been trivial to make the language disallow nil, separate goroutine address spaces, crash the process on unhandled panic in any goroutine, etc. The reason Go annoys people is the unforced errors. Sure, it gets a lot right. But what it gets wrong had solutions long before Go existed and those solutions were wilfully ignored.
    - bheadmaster 3y ago
      > It would’ve been trivial to make the language disallow nil Which would interfere with Go's philosophy that zero should be a valid (usable) state for types. What would be the default value of a reference type without nil? > separate goroutine address spaces This is not trivial to implement. The only way I can think of is to start each goroutine in a new process, which brings along other downsides - everything must be copied, cannot pass file/socket handlers between goroutines, etc. Doesn't seem to be worth it. > crash the process on unhandled panic in any goroutine Go does crash the process on unhandled panic in any goroutine: # main.go package main func main() { go func() { panic("hehe") }() for { } } # go run main.go panic: hehe goroutine 5 [running]: main.main.func1() /[...]/main.go:5 +0x27 created by main.main /[...]/main.go:4 +0x25 exit status 2 > The reason Go annoys people is the unforced errors. This is the criticism I've also had, and raised an issue on GitHub. Unfortunately, it's impossible to fix this without breaking backwards compatibility. > But what it gets wrong had solutions long before Go existed and those solutions were wilfully ignored. They were wilfully ignored, but only because the tradeoffs didn't seem worth it at the moment. You make it sound bad, as if Go devs were simply high on crack and knew what they doing was wrong, but did it anyways, when in reality it's more of a case of those "solutions" not being compatible with the goals of the language, or simply nobody coming up with an elegant way to incorporate it.
      - dontlaugh 3y ago
        Sum types let you have default values without pervasive nil. That’s not new either, it’s been done since at least ML. Separate address spaces are trivial when you have a runtime, just look at Erlang. Go could’ve also copied Erlang’s supervision trees to ensure safe and bounded goroutine lifetime. For all their impressive achievements, Go’s creators suffer from extreme NIH syndrome. Just look at Plan 9.
        bheadmaster 3y ago
        Sum types are optional. And if you make them obligatory, they become just syntax sugar for nil. What would be the default value of a non-sum reference type, without nil? Erlang's "address space isolation" is not real address space isolation, only semantic. Erlang "processes" are all still in the same address space, but the language semantics doesn't allow them to interfere with one another. You can implement bounded goroutine lifetime by using sync.WaitGroup and other constructs for coordinating goroutines. Go just doesn't force you to. > Go’s creators suffer from extreme NIH syndrome. Just look at Plan 9. This is just bad faith arguing. Plan 9 was revolutionary in many ways, and brushing it off as just NIH makes me think you don't understand or recognize its achievements.
        dontlaugh 3y ago
        An Optional defaulting to None when created can still fail to compile if you don't check whether it's None when you use it. Same with a Result defaulting to an Error. The problem with nil for any pointer or interface is that you can compile code dereferencing it without first checking if it's nil.
        bheadmaster 3y ago
        > The problem with nil for any pointer or interface is that you can compile code dereferencing it without first checking if it's nil. Yes, Go doesn't stop you from making mistakes. I think we've already rehashed that a couple of times...
- weakfish 3y ago
  Can’t the parent wait by simply using the waitgroup sync functionality? That’s what I’ve been doing in my greenfield Go project at work.
  - dontlaugh 3y ago
    Sure, but you can neglect to do it or get it wrong. The language could expose primitives that don’t allow it instead. In practice, where I work we disallow the go keyword in review and require use of a wrapper that takes in a closure and also is a wait group. It’s much harder to get wrong.

dontlaugh 3y ago

And yet goroutines share the same address space, don’t have a good way for the parent to wait for them and even panic silently. There’s a reason many projects ban the go keyword in favour of a wrapper that fixes some of this. Go requires constant vigilance, sadly.

bheadmaster 3y ago
Yes, as I said, Go doesn't make it impossible to make mistakes. It doesn't hold your hand and slap you when you go off-road. But saying it "requires constant vigilance" is an overstatement. As long as you put a little bit of thought in the concurrent code you're writing, it's very easy to do things right. Data races are easy to avoid if you only transfer ownership by sending pointers through channels.
- dontlaugh 3y ago
  It would’ve been trivial to make the language disallow nil, separate goroutine address spaces, crash the process on unhandled panic in any goroutine, etc. The reason Go annoys people is the unforced errors. Sure, it gets a lot right. But what it gets wrong had solutions long before Go existed and those solutions were wilfully ignored.
  - bheadmaster 3y ago
    > It would’ve been trivial to make the language disallow nil Which would interfere with Go's philosophy that zero should be a valid (usable) state for types. What would be the default value of a reference type without nil? > separate goroutine address spaces This is not trivial to implement. The only way I can think of is to start each goroutine in a new process, which brings along other downsides - everything must be copied, cannot pass file/socket handlers between goroutines, etc. Doesn't seem to be worth it. > crash the process on unhandled panic in any goroutine Go does crash the process on unhandled panic in any goroutine: # main.go package main func main() { go func() { panic("hehe") }() for { } } # go run main.go panic: hehe goroutine 5 [running]: main.main.func1() /[...]/main.go:5 +0x27 created by main.main /[...]/main.go:4 +0x25 exit status 2 > The reason Go annoys people is the unforced errors. This is the criticism I've also had, and raised an issue on GitHub. Unfortunately, it's impossible to fix this without breaking backwards compatibility. > But what it gets wrong had solutions long before Go existed and those solutions were wilfully ignored. They were wilfully ignored, but only because the tradeoffs didn't seem worth it at the moment. You make it sound bad, as if Go devs were simply high on crack and knew what they doing was wrong, but did it anyways, when in reality it's more of a case of those "solutions" not being compatible with the goals of the language, or simply nobody coming up with an elegant way to incorporate it.
    - dontlaugh 3y ago
      Sum types let you have default values without pervasive nil. That’s not new either, it’s been done since at least ML. Separate address spaces are trivial when you have a runtime, just look at Erlang. Go could’ve also copied Erlang’s supervision trees to ensure safe and bounded goroutine lifetime. For all their impressive achievements, Go’s creators suffer from extreme NIH syndrome. Just look at Plan 9.
      - bheadmaster 3y ago
        Sum types are optional. And if you make them obligatory, they become just syntax sugar for nil. What would be the default value of a non-sum reference type, without nil? Erlang's "address space isolation" is not real address space isolation, only semantic. Erlang "processes" are all still in the same address space, but the language semantics doesn't allow them to interfere with one another. You can implement bounded goroutine lifetime by using sync.WaitGroup and other constructs for coordinating goroutines. Go just doesn't force you to. > Go’s creators suffer from extreme NIH syndrome. Just look at Plan 9. This is just bad faith arguing. Plan 9 was revolutionary in many ways, and brushing it off as just NIH makes me think you don't understand or recognize its achievements.
        dontlaugh 3y ago
        An Optional defaulting to None when created can still fail to compile if you don't check whether it's None when you use it. Same with a Result defaulting to an Error. The problem with nil for any pointer or interface is that you can compile code dereferencing it without first checking if it's nil.
        bheadmaster 3y ago
        > The problem with nil for any pointer or interface is that you can compile code dereferencing it without first checking if it's nil. Yes, Go doesn't stop you from making mistakes. I think we've already rehashed that a couple of times...
weakfish 3y ago
Can’t the parent wait by simply using the waitgroup sync functionality? That’s what I’ve been doing in my greenfield Go project at work.
- dontlaugh 3y ago
  Sure, but you can neglect to do it or get it wrong. The language could expose primitives that don’t allow it instead. In practice, where I work we disallow the go keyword in review and require use of a wrapper that takes in a closure and also is a wait group. It’s much harder to get wrong.