Comment by 9rx

Inserting elements in to a slice can be done quite easily since the introduction of the slices package to the standard library.

https://pkg.go.dev/slices#Insert

> Well, then they look awkward and have give a feel like it's a syntax abuse.

So nothing to worry about?

> how do I insert an element in the middle of an array?

Same as in C. If the array allocation is large enough, you can move the right hand side to the next memory location, and then replace the middle value.

Something like:

    replaceWith := 3
    replaceAt := 2
    array := [5]int{1, 2, 4, 5}
    size := 4
    for i := size; i > replaceAt; i-- {
        array[i] = array[i-1]
    }
    array[replaceAt] = replaceWith
    fmt.Println(array) // Output: [1 2 3 4 5]

If the array is not large enough, well, you are out of luck. Just like C, arrays must be allocated with a fixed size defined at compile time.

> The docs on the internet suggest that slices in go are exactly like in Rust, a contiguous sequence of array's elements.

They're exactly like how you'd implement a slice in C:

    struct slice {
        void *ptr;
        size_t len;
        size_t cap;
    };

The only thing Go really adds, aside from making slice a built-in type, that you wouldn't find in C is the [:] syntax.

Which isn't exactly the same as Rust. Technically, a Rust slice looks something like:

    struct slice {
        void *ptr;
        size_t len;
    };

There is some obvious overlap, of course. It still has to run on the same computer at the end of the day. But there is enough magic in Rust to hide the details that I think that you lose the nuance in that description. Go, on the other hand, picks up the exact same patterns one uses in C. So if you understand how you'd do it in C, you understand how you'd do it in Go.

Of course, that does mean operating a bit lower level than some developers are used to. Go favours making expensive operations obvious so that is a tradeoff it is willing to make, but regardless if it were to make it more familiar to developers coming from the land of magic it stands that it would require more magic, not less.

As a C++ dev, such comments reinforce my hesitation to pick up either Go or Rust seriously :) It seems I already have the golden middle after all.

I like the language saying "it's not as easy as you think" when I'm about to do something ill-advised like roll my own mutable tree structure.