> Sort of--you get dynamic types, so you can stuff whatever you want into your collections. You can do that in Go, too--just use interface{}. Sadly, that has not quieted the Generics Brigade.
This argument, made often by the Go team, contradicts other arguments made by the Go team. Generics done like this have no type safety, which is the central reason for Go.
> If you used arrays in PHP, or Ruby, or Python, you can get those--with static typing!--in Go, either with slices for sequential arrays, or maps for associative arrays. I think that satisfies the vast majority of collection use-cases that arise in practical applications of those three languages.
Of course what everybody wants is trees, sorted maps, sets, ... WITH static typing.
> (Note: I think generics would be a Good Thing for Go, and I think they'll probably happen at some point. They keep doing user surveys, and the user surveys keep bringing up the lack of generics as one of if not the number-one issue that users would like to see addressed.)
No they won't. The real issue is that implementing them is pretty difficult in the compiler. Go's compiler is extremely, extremely simplistic, even to the point that it's badly written. It needs a LOT of cleaning up before anyone can reasonably contemplate adding generics.
Go aims to combine the safety and performance of a
statically typed compiled language with the expressiveness and convenience of a dynamically typed interpreted language."
I suppose time will tell whether generics are added or not. I'm--not exactly buying your argument that Go's compiler is badly written, or itself the reason that generics can't be added. But god bless ya for having an opinion.
This argument, made often by the Go team, contradicts other arguments made by the Go team. Generics done like this have no type safety, which is the central reason for Go.
> If you used arrays in PHP, or Ruby, or Python, you can get those--with static typing!--in Go, either with slices for sequential arrays, or maps for associative arrays. I think that satisfies the vast majority of collection use-cases that arise in practical applications of those three languages.
Of course what everybody wants is trees, sorted maps, sets, ... WITH static typing.
> (Note: I think generics would be a Good Thing for Go, and I think they'll probably happen at some point. They keep doing user surveys, and the user surveys keep bringing up the lack of generics as one of if not the number-one issue that users would like to see addressed.)
No they won't. The real issue is that implementing them is pretty difficult in the compiler. Go's compiler is extremely, extremely simplistic, even to the point that it's badly written. It needs a LOT of cleaning up before anyone can reasonably contemplate adding generics.