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> It is an explicit goal of the go team to minimize the number of keywords in the language. It's understandable - because unfortunately people judge languages

by pansa2 2y ago

> It is an explicit goal of the go team to minimize the number of keywords in the language. It's understandable - because unfortunately people judge languages by very shallow metrics. Several times I've seen people use "number of keywords" as a proxy for language complexity. However, that's completely misguided. `static` in C++ (and, IMO, `for` in Go) demonstrate that overloading a keyword to mean multiple things is harder to understand than having a larger number of more meaningful keywords.

weinzierl 2y ago
I (still) find it confusing that in C++ the symbols to declare a pointer and a reference are the same as the ones for dereference and address-of. That pointers declared with * in Go are more like references (&) and that there are no true pointers (I think) does not really help.
- pjmlp 2y ago
  Go has true pointers. If you mean pointers arithmetic, that can be achieved with unsafe package.
  - weinzierl 2y ago
    From my vantage, pointers without arithmetic are typically called references, as opposed to "true" pointers. I did not mean it in a derogatory way, both have their place and Go is a great language even (or maybe despite) without what I would call "true" pointers.
    - pjmlp 2y ago
      From CS point of view, references are pointers that you can't get the underlying value behind them. Being able to do arithmetic is orthogonal to that. In fact check a language like D, C#, Swift, with references, pointers, and pointers with arithmetic.
    - trealira 2y ago
      The fact that, in Go, you can have pointers to pointers, and reassign pointer variables like any other, would imply, IMO, that pointers are first-class values, and so they are true pointers, even without being able to pointer arithmetic with them.
dingnuts 2y ago
how is for overloaded? in other languages you can just do for (;;) { which is the same; while is a redundant keyword

by pansa2 2y ago

weinzierl 2y ago

I (still) find it confusing that in C++ the symbols to declare a pointer and a reference are the same as the ones for dereference and address-of. That pointers declared with * in Go are more like references (&) and that there are no true pointers (I think) does not really help.

pjmlp 2y ago
Go has true pointers. If you mean pointers arithmetic, that can be achieved with unsafe package.
- weinzierl 2y ago
  From my vantage, pointers without arithmetic are typically called references, as opposed to "true" pointers. I did not mean it in a derogatory way, both have their place and Go is a great language even (or maybe despite) without what I would call "true" pointers.
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    From CS point of view, references are pointers that you can't get the underlying value behind them. Being able to do arithmetic is orthogonal to that. In fact check a language like D, C#, Swift, with references, pointers, and pointers with arithmetic.
  - trealira 2y ago
    The fact that, in Go, you can have pointers to pointers, and reassign pointer variables like any other, would imply, IMO, that pointers are first-class values, and so they are true pointers, even without being able to pointer arithmetic with them.

dingnuts 2y ago

how is for overloaded? in other languages you can just do for (;;) { which is the same; while is a redundant keyword