Comment by asim
2 days ago
If I'm being honest, the magic of Go was lost when generics were introduced. It now feels akin to Java, which I guess was inevitable and for anyone to really take it seriously maybe it needed to get here. But I am not a fan of generics. While that level of abstraction and composability is clever, it also lends itself to more complexity and systems that can be harder to concretely understand. Just an opinion that I know many will not agree with but I come from the systems side rather than pure software engineering. It's probably ironic considering go-micro leans heavily on interfaces for abstraction but in that there are many hard learned lessons.
Interesting perspective.
Coming from C#, whose generics are first class, I struggled to obtain any real value from Go's generics. It's not possible to execute on ideas that fit nicely in your head, and you instead end up fighting tooth and nail to wrangle what feels like an afterthought into something concrete that fits in your head.
Generics works well as a replacement for liberally using interface{} everywhere, making programs more readable, but as class and interface level I tend to avoid it as I find I don't really understand what is going on. I just needed it to work so I could move on
The difference with Java is that in Java, generics are everywhere and they make up half the Java spec - I bookmarked a page ages ago (from a HN comment) that highlights it, see [0], and that's just one page.
With Go, at least initially, it was an addition, not a core aspect of it - any code written in Go before generics will still work. Granted, I only have one real project but I never had a use case for generics - the built-in generic structures (map and arrays/slices) were enough for me. Maybe when you have code that works with the `interface{}` a lot (e.g. unknown JSON data) you'll have a use case for it.
[0] https://angelikalanger.com/GenericsFAQ/FAQSections/TypeParam...
> Maybe when you have code that works with the `interface{}` a lot (e.g. unknown JSON data) you'll have a use case for it.
I think in those cases, generics are specifically kind of pointless. Because you will inherently need to use `reflect` anyways. Generics are only helpful if you do know things about your types.
Generics are most useful for people who write special-purpose data structures. And hence for people who need such special-purpose data structures but don't want to implement them themself. The prototypical example is a lock-free map, which you only need, if you really need to solve performance problems and which specific kind of lock-free map you need depends very heavily on your workload. `sync.Map` is famously only really useful for mostly write-once caches, because that's what its optimized for.
The vast majority of people don't need such special-purpose data structures and can get by just fine with a `map` and a mutex. But Go has reach the level of adoption, where it can only really grow further, if it can also address the kinds of use-cases which do need something more specific.
I was so excited when generics were going to release, and, tbh, I've barely used them. It's made some code easier to express correctly in the type system in rare cases.
I don't think I'd agree it's made the language "Java-like". That sounds like more of an indictment of the author of the code you're reviewing ;)
> If I'm being honest, the magic of Go was lost when generics were introduced. It now feels akin to Java, [...]
Funnily enough, Java didn't use to have generics. I wonder whether it didn't feel like Java back then?
No one is forcing you to use the full scope of language features for every project.
This kind of argument comes up every time a new C# language version rolls out - as if it's a breaking change and now everyone is going to be forced to refactor for it.
The only other way I can read this is in terms of wishing others would use tools in the way you prefer, which is clearly a waste of energy.
Yeah but imagine a horrible feature. Let's say a macro language in brain fuck.
Sure don't use it.
But then half the libraries you use force it upon you.
You soon have no choice!