Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
That has Java 1994 written all over it.
(This happened with early Java as well; one hallmark of Java is that it talked
out of existence all necessities of modern languages until it adopted them,
invariably too late to be properly integrated.)
And what happened to Java?
Looking at the popularity of Java:
http://www.devtopics.com/most-popular-programming-languages/
http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html
http://langpop.com/
If the Go will reach the same results... future will tell.
And, by the way, where's the popularity of the D?
As I understand from the Go docs
http://golang.org/doc/go_lang_faq.html
Why does Go not have generic types?
Generics may well be added at some point. We don't feel an urgency for them,
although we understand some programmers do.
Generics are convenient but they come at a cost in complexity in the type
system and run-time. We haven't yet found a design that gives value
proportionate to the complexity, although we continue to think about it.
Meanwhile, Go's built-in maps and slices, plus the ability to use the empty
interface to construct containers (with explicit unboxing) mean in many cases
it is possible to write code that does what generics would enable, if less
smoothly.
This remains an open issue.
As you can see there's no "contempt", if this word is applicable at all.
Russ Cox recently commented on the topic.
http://groups.google.com/group/golang-nuts/browse_thread/thread/3c24dd8e7b083e34/22fbbc72858f4121
The generic approach is more or less obvious:
Less, if you ask me.
http://golang.org/doc/go_lang_faq.html#generics
is short but accurate.
The rest of your mail reads like someone reveling in
having built something complex that actually works.
It's an addictive feeling - why do you think there are
so many C++ programmers? - but I think in general
it is counterproductive.
It has been interesting to me to see programmers who
have written substantial amounts of Go code, even
outside the core Go team, say that on balance they
don't really miss generics and would not want to see
them unless they fit well with the rest of the language.
(Petar just said something like that in one of his Tonika
blog posts, and someone else said it earlier on the list.)
The kind of explicit type-oriented programming that
seems inherent to the C++/Java/C# approach to "generics"
is exactly the kind of heavyweight clumsy spell everything
out for the compiler programming that Go strives so hard
not to be.
Russ
I hope this comment helps.
--
Alex Makhotin,
the founder of BITPROX,
http://bitprox.com
