[saghm]

> Go does not have threads but something like "tasks". The fact that no thread handle is exposed allows for transparently moving these tasks across threads if the scheduler decides so.

This doesn't stop there being "task handles" then, though? I think the point GP was making is that something that in most languages would be simple methods on a handle like "wait for this task to finish" or "stop this task" instead need to be done manually in Go with channels (or potentially `Context` in the latter case, although that was a later addition to the standard library). It doesn't really matter whether you call it a thread or a task; either way, it would be nice to get some return value from spawning some background operation and being able to use it to directly interact with it. I agree with GP that it does seem like an odd omission, since I haven't really heard any actual practical explanation for it.

[Groxx]

Context for cancellation and replacing thread-local variables (or indeed any way to observe your "current" thread) is one of the things I like tbh. Though Context has abysmal performance implications.

But yeah, I want a goroutine handle with a "Wait()" method. Ideally also returning the results. Like most languages. It'd eliminate a ton of manual mutex and channel use that doesn't need to exist.

---

Re thread vs tasks: that's an implementation detail. You write threaded code and it runs in multiple threads with thread-like memory behavior. In all in-Go observable ways it's identical to threads, and it could be changed to use real hardware threads tomorrow and none of the semantics would change at all. Even cgo would stay the same.

Go has (green) threads. Being more specific is relevant for runtime implementation spelunking and performance details, but not otherwise.

[saghm]

Yeah, I generally think of the word "thread" as referring to OS threads and/or "green" threads depending on context (and in this case I thought it was clear what you were referring to!), but since the person who responded to you made the distinction, I figured I'd use their terminology when explaining what I thought you were saying.

[Groxx]

I was just leveraging your already-top reply to reply to both of you, sorry about that :) I should've just done two comments. I think you and I are on the same page here.

I think the main reason it doesn't exist is that go had no generics. It'd need to be another custom-generic type (Future[T] basically), and it would make it harder to pass around, just like channels. But since channels are generally intrusively-added, they aren't part of the return signature, so they avoid that generic-return issue. E.g. every "worker pool" accepts a `func()` and callers need to coordinate return values via channels, instead of needing to return a `func[T]()` reference which they have been unable to do until recently (to some degree at least).

Though they probably could've just said "use a Future[interface{}]", like they did for every other generic collection type.

Plus it'd take some of the emphasis off channels, and they seem to really not want to do that. If they were focused on usability instead of channels and select, they'd let us park on multiple mutexes just like channels, just like the runtime does internally a lot to implement all this... but no. Imagine a world where you could `select { case mut.Lock(): ...}`...

[saghm]

> I think the main reason it doesn't exist is that go had no generics. It'd need to be another custom-generic type (Future[T] basically), and it would make it harder to pass around, just like channels. But since channels are generally intrusively-added, they aren't part of the return signature, so they avoid that generic-return issue.

That's a good point I hadn't thought of! Naively I wan to say they could just "implicitly" make anything returned from a `go func` be passed to a channel and then have `go func` return a channel, but that would require doing a bit of type inference as well as deciding semantics for whether it's possible to get multiple values out of that return channel. It honestly seems like there are some interesting ideas here (e.g. having multiple yields out of a go routine that then get sent to an "output" channel, making a sort of generator-like thing, but I guess I'm not super surprised that Go didn't choose to go this route.

[mmarq]

My (rather horrid) pattern to address this problem is to wrap the goroutine in a function that returns a channel receiver. When the goroutine ends it sends something to the channel and whatever called it can await the result or completion using the receiver.

[randomswede]

I have, on occasion, used a similar pattern, but instead of sending something, I simply close the channel (usually with a "defer close(c)" at the beginning of the function/closure that encompasses the main code of the goroutine's work).

That way, if I end up having multiple waiters, they will all be able to proceed.

[silisili]

I've always thought it would be nice if the go command returned an ID. Doing so would also be completely backwards compatible, of course. Then add a library or few builtins to do things on that ID, at minimum maybe kill it, perhaps get status of it, etc. Maybe not full blown actor model, but having nothing feels powerless.