[j16sdiz]

Go use a duck typing system, many of the generic use case can be solved using interface elegantly..

For the rest... Yes, it is very ugly. But the standard generic does not fit very well with go type system, so....

Luckily, go is very simple. Even ugly bit are not hard to understand.

[latronic_notron]

> But the standard generic does not fit very well with go type system, so....

Why not? Generics in Arrays/Maps/Slices fit perfectly in the language, and don't feel weird at all in Go.

[jstimpfle]

> Arrays/Maps/Slices

They are widely used data structures and so, in the opinion of the Go creators, justified separate specialized implementations in the Go compiler. In other words, there isn't actually a Generics system in the language (I don't actually know this, correct me if I'm wrong). For various reasons. There are quite a few talks and design docs from Rob Pike and Russ Cox if you look for them.

[latronic_notron]

Nope. They are generics, aka parametric polymorphism. And they fit perfectly within Go.

And generics aren't just for abstract data structures, there are other uses as well.

[jstimpfle]

I think you've misunderstood what I said. For example here: https://golang.org/src/go/parser/parser.go you can clearly see how e.g. token.MAP is a special case.

    func (p *parser) tryIdentOrType() ast.Expr {
        ....
        case token.MAP:
            return p.parseMapType()

There is a special-cased function parseMapType() function in the Go parser. This isn't generic at all. I mean even the syntax (as in func foo(bar map[String]int) ...) does not seem to be generic at all.

Yes, you can use any type as keys and values. But that's a far cry from an abstract system that lets the user define any parameterizable data type. And that's for good reason: By hardcoding just the most important parameterizable data types, the problems that an abstract system would bring can be avoided.

[latronic_notron]

Yes, I'm aware that they're a special case. What I mean is that this is exactly what is traditionally called "generics" or "parametric polymorphism" in PL literature. Go's Map/Array/Slice called "predefined generic types" in some literature.