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Comment by wannabe44

1 day ago

Oh yeah totally agree. I don't understand why someone would want to write `slices.Contains(s, needle)` when you can write this beautiful poem like a Shakespeare in VSCode:

    found := false
    for _, v := range s {
        if v == needle {
            found = true
            break
        }
    }

Oh and I totally want to build a stack trace manually. It's like doing cardio to me.

    if err != nil {
       return fmt.Errorf("my function name but in spaces: %w", err);
    }

This is very elegant by the way, so that we need errors.Is now, which has to dynamically check if the error implements Unwrap() error or Unwrap() []error. Because having any language facilities for error handling is harmful.

56 comments

wannabe44

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bayindirh  1 day ago

> Because having any language facilities for error handling is harmful.

No, making error handling verbose mandatory is meant to make developers do mental cardio and be mindful of what they are doing.

You can either keep developers mindful or punish them after they make a mistake by shouting at them and make them waste their time during re-compiling.

P.S.: Yes, I love Go's error handling mechanics, which makes handling errors mandatory, not optional, and if you ignore the error, this is a deliberate choice and the burden is on the developer. Go does the former, Rust does the latter.

  • KronisLV  13 hours ago

    > which makes handling errors mandatory

    Unpopular take, but I personally also believe that unchecked exceptions in Java and other languages like that are an issue - because it makes too easy to miss where things could go wrong, instead of making you visibly handle the potential known failure points, or indicate to callers what you're not handling.

  • sapiogram  1 day ago

    What are you talking about, only Rust actually forces you to handle errors. Go functions merely return a tuple with an error along with the result, with a convention that you must checktror a non-nil error before using the result.

    Rust bakes this into the type system, a function can truly return a result or an error.

    • wannabe44  1 day ago

      In practice you use Go with a linter, so this is not a problem in practice. I have never seen a missed error.

      The problem is painstakingly and manually having to build the stack trace, and then unwrapping it few layers above if you ever need to check what error it was.

      5 replies →

    • bayindirh  1 day ago

      > with a convention that you must checktror a non-nil error before using the result.

      So, you handle the error in the end, or forcefully and intentionally ignore it. Again, if the code goes boom, it's on the developer, not on Go.

      > Rust bakes this into the type system, a function can truly return a result or an error.

      Error being a variable or baked into the type system doesn't change the practical result. You must handle the error or purposefully ignore it.

      > only Rust actually forces you to handle errors.

      When you have two programming languages which makes you handle the error, the word only becomes a little invalid.

      Semantics doesn't change the result. You have to acknowledge and act on the error either way.

      22 replies →

    • yoghurtwere  1 day ago

      .unwrap().

      I am skeptical about Go's error handling, but there are cases where it is desirable to return both a result and also an error, like returning what can be returned while warning users about any errors. That can be modeled in Rust and other languages as well, though it is the default for Go.

TACIXAT  1 day ago

https://pkg.go.dev/slices#Contains ?

Also, if error wrapping hurts you so much (I don't use it), just implement a project-specific error that works how you want. This could be something that is JSON serializable, that captures a line number at each return site, etc. It will take like 10 minutes to get your project's errors working exactly how you want.

My projects usually do -

    log.SetFlags(log.LstdFlags | log.Lshortfile)
    // ...
    if err != nil {
        log.Println(err)
        return errors.New("Error doing the thing.")
    }

That essentially logs a stack trace with line numbers up the whole error chain, each return adding the outer context. I only ever use errors.Is for os.ErrNotExist.

  • wannabe44  13 hours ago

    I know about slices module. But GP is not happy about generics apparently.

    I think your error solution is good. But still it's a poor imitation of Exceptions wherein you have to capture the stack trace manually, possibly incuring a perf hit (haven't measured), and write handling code in every layer. Made worse by the fact that people return desperate errors for even precondition violations which should be panics.

hoppp  16 hours ago

1. There is nothing stopping you from implementing a Contains function.

2.That error handling is one of the best features. It makes me explicitly acknowledge the errors instead of letting them just happen. No error goes unnoticed!

Each if err != nil is an explicit reminder to check, do I need to clean up? Do I need to log this error to a file?

"And no more oh an error happened I wonder where"

With LLMs verbosity is not an excuse anymore. Just generate it and focus on other things then

logicchains  1 day ago

Your handwritten one has a major performance bug:

    found := false
    for _, v := range s {
        if v == needle {
            found = true
            break
        }
    }

Do you see it? It copies the v into a local variable, which could be tremendously wasteful if it's a large struct. You should instead be taking a pointer to s[i] and comparing the value there with `needle`.

If you'd used `slices.Contains(s, needle)`, on the other hand, it could have such a performance bug in it and you'd never know.

  • kajman  1 day ago

    > If you'd used `slices.Contains(s, needle)`, on the other hand, it could have such a performance bug in it and you'd never know.

    Perhaps you're much better at programming than I am, but I prefer these semantics in a language because I figure they're much more likely to have been optimized empirically, support vectorization, and be less buggy than another rote loop I'm trying to speed through.

    • asdf88990  1 day ago

      That is just a silly rationalisation by primitivists, and they will never be able to articulate any rational point where abstracts makes sense, in their world, whatever Russ Cox and a bunch of Google employees deem fit is the ideal.

      Even when Russ Cox and Go team had come to term with reality and stopped pretending like we are in 70s still, these lot will move goalposts. It is a kind of psychosis and sycophancy that is beyond rational discourse.

      1 reply →

  • mathisfun123  1 day ago

    > on the other hand, it could have such a performance bug in it and you'd never know.

    wut...? the debate isn't between closed (incompetent) source and open (competent) source - the debate is between verbose language and expressive language.