slowly implementing all the things they said we didn't need
TheChaplain•49m ago
It's not a bad thing to realize that one can be wrong and then strive for change.
a-french-anon•38m ago
Maybe, but personally I've become quite tired of programming languages "organically grown" as opposed to properly designed the first time. After a good decade of C then C++, I found ANSI CL (despite being a massive compromise and unfinished) much more coherent and complete than both.
ramon156•30m ago
So which language had it right from the start? is there a language that has a very low rewrite status?
bbkane•22m ago
I'd particularly like examples of statically typed languages that "got it right" (since I love me my types)
maccard•16m ago
That’s whataboutism - no language is perfect, but given when go released it’s fair to hold them to a higher standard than languages what were designed 25 years earlier.
As an aside - D, Zig, Rust, even typescript got most of the lessons learned from C right
ndr•25m ago
"Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp."
-- Greenspun's tenth rule
He had some lack of conviction to scope it so narrowly.
bbkane•23m ago
I know Go is justly criticized for many of its design decisions, but it still feels well-designed and "small" to me in day to day usage when many other languages don't.
xscott•10m ago
Scheme is (or at least was) coherent. You don't need to look any further than set/setf/setq to see that Common Lisp is "organically grown" from the fertilizer of a committee. CL does it's best to make every other lisp more attractive.
rootnod3•6m ago
Which Scheme are we talking about? R5RS? R7RS-small? R6RS? With SRFIs? Without? Which scheme? Is it `(library...)` or `(define-module...)`?
rootnod3•5m ago
ANSI CL is such a breath of fresh air nowadays. Does what you need, doesn't get in your way, comes with batteries included. And conditions are just god-tier.
tux3•26m ago
I don't think anyone admitted any wrong or had any big change in philosophy. It's always a good thing to learn something along the way. But the current message seems to be that this was the plan all along, and it just took some time to design properly.
Of course adding generics is not something that every language needs to do. Scripting languages like Ruby don't really need this style of generics. It doesn't fit the design of the language, and it's not even clear what that would look like in Ruby.
But static typing with generics does solve a recurring problem, and we've seen some real convergence towards type hints and type systems even in staunchly dynamic scripting languages. Modern Javascript is now mostly Typescript, and they've successfully retrofitted a very advanced type system in the last place I would have expected 20 years ago.
galangalalgol•15m ago
Type hinting seems like the worst of both. You pay the cost on refactor to go change them all, where dynamic typing or static type inference avoid that. You also don't have any of the benefits of static or dynamic typing. My strong preference is static typing with good inference and an ide that shows the inferred types everywhere when asked. Dynamic typing can make some tasks dramatically easier, I'm just not capable of using them without making hideous mistakes.
maccard•20m ago
There’s a fine line between being willing to change your mind and getting the basics wrong. Go has repeatedly gotten the basics wrong.
Jleagle•17m ago
Sounds like you want this feature, and you just got it. Not sure how that's wrong. You don't add in every feature from the start.
maccard•15m ago
I wanted it 10 years ago.
whoiskevin•5m ago
Declaring a highly successful language as having the basics wrong means that you are not correct about the basics that were needed.
9rx•13m ago
Of course, if you go back and watch the original Go announcement it said that it would need generics once they figured out how to do it. And when the first version of generics landed it was said that generic methods would be added later, once they figured out how to do it. So that isn't applicable here. The need was always recognized.
kardianos•20m ago
This is great. Will be useful for data access methods!
As for the detractors, from the first generics proposal this was called out as a "not now", not never. There were questions of implementation. They aren't a super large team, and they try to do things incrementally and do them well.
nasretdinov•6m ago
Lack of generic methods was really surprising to me when I was first trying to use generics in Go. Nice to see it being actually implemented
h1fra•52m ago
TheChaplain•49m ago
a-french-anon•38m ago
ramon156•30m ago
bbkane•22m ago
maccard•16m ago
As an aside - D, Zig, Rust, even typescript got most of the lessons learned from C right
ndr•25m ago
-- Greenspun's tenth rule
He had some lack of conviction to scope it so narrowly.
bbkane•23m ago
xscott•10m ago
rootnod3•6m ago
rootnod3•5m ago
tux3•26m ago
Of course adding generics is not something that every language needs to do. Scripting languages like Ruby don't really need this style of generics. It doesn't fit the design of the language, and it's not even clear what that would look like in Ruby.
But static typing with generics does solve a recurring problem, and we've seen some real convergence towards type hints and type systems even in staunchly dynamic scripting languages. Modern Javascript is now mostly Typescript, and they've successfully retrofitted a very advanced type system in the last place I would have expected 20 years ago.
galangalalgol•15m ago
maccard•20m ago
Jleagle•17m ago
maccard•15m ago
whoiskevin•5m ago
9rx•13m ago