[rapsey]

> Please, do explain: what does "much less expressive" mean, in technical terms? What specific data modeling can I not do in Go, and what specific bugs can be caused by that?

> Yes, so? De-Referencing a null pointer in Go crashes the program, making the bug very obvious.

At runtime. i.e. production. You think that is just as good as solving the problem at compile time? I certainly don't.

[usrbinbash]

> At runtime. i.e. production.

At runtime, i.e. initial testing, pre-commit-checks, integration-testing, QA and then production, yes.

So there are a lot of checkpoints where the system can crash before it ever goes live.

> You think that is just as good as solving the problem at compile time?

No, I don't, and I never wrote that I do.

I do think that it's a lot better than not crashing and running inti undefined behavior when dereferencing a null pointer, which is a problem in older languages, and a source of hard to track bugs.

The problem is: solving it at compile time isn't zero-cost.

Languages that pretend that void pointers don't exist are usually more complex than languages that accept their existence as a fact of the underlying hardware. That extra complexity comes at a tangible cost in development time and maintainability. A language that fails early, and with a clear signal, will sometimes crash in testing, and maybe maybe maybe in production here and there, and such crashes may incur a cost. A more complex language will always incur a higher cost in developer time.

[rapsey]

The higher cost in developer time is a myth. Because the type checking seriously helps you out when you are changing existing code and it results in much fewer bugs out of the gate.

Sure the language in its totality is more complex. At least compared to Go or C. But nothing is forcing you to use every feature of it.

[usrbinbash]

> The higher cost in developer time is a myth.

And yet, Go is a huge success in the industry, and one of the main reasons often given for chosing Go over a competing language, is how easy it is to get things started, how easy it makes the onboarding process, and how accessible and maintainable the code is.

> the type checking seriously helps you out when you are changing existing code

If you have Algebraic Datatypes in your codebase, which is not a given. Having a simple, easy to read language helps me out ALL THE TIME.

> But nothing is forcing you to use every feature of it.

And nothing forces C developers to use so many macros that their libraries resemble a completely different language where everything I thought I learned about C flies out the window. Nothing forces Python devs to use nested dictionary-comprehensions, that are, ironically, completely incomprehensible. Nothing forces C++ developers to use generics everywhere, regardless of whether they are actually needed or not.

And yet, that is, unfortunately, what is often happening in the wild.

The point here is; If a language offers X, then X will be used. And it will be used in smart ways, it will be used in unnecessary ways, and it will be used in not-so-smart ways. It will be used when it makes sense, and when it absolutely doesn't.

The thing the developers of Go figured out, and which, in hindsight, is surprisingly obvious, is that there is exactly one, and only one, foolproof way to prevent that from happening: By not having X in the language.

[biorach]

You're a zealot and your comment is a polemic, not any kind of reasoned discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of one language as against another.

[usrbinbash]

This isn't a discussion about the advantages or disadvantages of languages.

This is a discussion about whether Go "misses" things, or "lacks" things, or if it's designed to not have these things, and if there is a reason why that is.

I have demonstrated, and provided arguments, for why the latter is the case. Aka. the exact opposite of "polemic".

[rapsey]

> And yet, Go is a huge success in the industry

Success of a technology is more often than not dependent on who is behind it. Anything by google will likely see a lot of uptake.

Every language has a story. Some of it is bull some not. Best to try and be objective and not drink every drop of the koolaid.

[usrbinbash]

> Anything by google will likely see a lot of uptake

Disagree.

https://www.failory.com/blog/google-failed-products