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Golang be like (i.imgur.com)
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[-] HiddenLayer5@lemmy.ml 83 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Sometimes I think Go was specifically made for Google to dictate its own preferences on the rest of us like some kind of power play. It enforces one single style of programming too much.

[-] philm@programming.dev 18 points 1 year ago

Is this a hard error? Like it doesn't compile at all?

Isn't there something like #[allow(unused)] in Rust you can put over the declaration?

[-] flame3244@lemmy.world 27 points 1 year ago

Yes it is a hard error and Go does not compile then. You can do _ = foobar to fake variable usage. I think this is okay for testing purposes.

[-] MonkCanatella@sh.itjust.works 29 points 1 year ago

I think that's even worse because it increases the likelihood you'll forget you faked that variable just for testing

[-] flame3244@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Worse than not having a unused variable check at all? Dunno, the underscore assignment are very visible for me and stand out on every code read and review.

[-] AeonFelis@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yes, worse, because now if you want to use the underscore assignment to indicate that you really want to discard that variable - it gets confused with underscore assignments that were put there "temporarily" for experimentation purpose.

[-] merc@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 year ago

Exactly.

Say I'm having some issue with a function. I comment out half the function to see if that's where the weirdness is. Golang says "unused variable, I refuse to compile this dogshit!" I completely fool Golang by just using _ = foo. Yes, I was correct, that's where the problem was. I rewrite that section of the code, and test it out, things work perfectly. Only now, it turns out I'm not using foo anymore, and Golang has no idea because I so cleverly fooled it with _ = foo.

Now, something that could be caught by a linter and expressed as a warning is missed by the language police entirely, and may make it into production code.

Police the code that people put into a repository / share with others. Don't police the code that people just want to test on their own.

[-] nomadjoanne@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

Ew, that's awful. Go is not one of my programming languages but I had always held it in high esteem because Ken Thompson and Rob Pike were involved in it.

[-] merc@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago

That's the main reason it has had any success. It's not that it's a good language, it's just that it has good references.

[-] flame3244@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Honestly, it does not happen often that I have a ln unused variable that I want to keep. In my mind it is the same thing when wanting to call a function that does not exists. Also my editor is highlighting error Long before I try to compile, so this is fine too for me.

[-] AstridWipenaugh@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The underscore is used in production code too. It's a legitimate way to tell the compiler to discard the object because you don't intend to use the pointer/value.

[-] HiddenLayer5@lemmy.ml 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Never really coded in Go outside of trying it out, but as far as I know it's a hard error.

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this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
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