[weberc2]

It seems like you’re objecting to the messaging (not referencing an existing language, which doesn’t work for people not familiar with the implementation of that language) and also that, at its inception, Go didn’t pick (randomly?) a language off of which to model its generic implementation. Am I misreading?

[iainmerrick]

Well, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of discussion of alternatives at all, so I can’t really see what design and implementation decisions are actually being made. Most likely I’m just looking in the wrong place, and those discussions are taking place elsewhere.

I guess my complaint is that this talk, like all the other updates on their progress on generics, implies that Go generics exist in a vacuum, whereas in reality there’s a ton of prior art that could usefully be referenced.

Edit to add: this particular talk is focused on syntax details. Those aren’t unimportant but they’re a small part of the whole picture. As I commented on the detailed Contracts proposal, the decision to add contracts rather than simply using interfaces (as in Java and C#) seems significant but isn’t explained.

[jerf]

It was beaten unto death in github repo issues, mailing list topics, and wiki pages soliciting real-world examples.

This post is basically a conference talk transcript. More stuff is in: https://go.googlesource.com/proposal/+/4a54a00950b56dd009648... including several callouts to other languages.

It didn't all hit HN, or perhaps more accurately, it probably did all hit HN but didn't all get upvoted because how many times does HN need to chew on it in a month?

[iainmerrick]

I think HN would chew on it every day if it could! Luckily it doesn’t bubble up to the front page quite that often...

Edit to add: thanks for the link! I now see that the full Contracts proposal includes some sections towards the end that address my concerns, eg “Why not use interfaces instead of contracts?”

[weberc2]

As jerf mentioned, there has been lots of talk; every single time the question of generics is raised here, /r/programming, or any Go-specific forum, it's addressed.

With respect to interfaces vs contracts; interfaces are about runtime polymorphism while contracts are about compile time polymorphism. This is an important difference when you consider []interface{Foo()} vs Slice(contract{Foo()})--an instance of the former can contain elements of varying concrete types while an instance of the latter can only contain elements of the same type. The other important detail is that interfaces only abstract over a single type while contracts support multiple type parameters (a single contract could specify a visitor type and a vistee type, for example).

[jayd16]

Referencing existing work is not an rare or fanciful concept. If you're not familiar with prior work that's referenced in a paper then you can research that prior work as well. If prior work has not been referenced or addressed its usually considered a flaw.

[dalksfjid]

>objecting

Reads more like suggesting to me. And, a helpful one.