[kweingar]

I learned programming from a Java 7 book in high school. When I went through the Tour of Go, I found myself shocked that anybody would want to write software in a language like this. Where is inheritance? Where is the data structures package? I couldn't even find a standard linked list. What if I have a list where I need to make lots of insertions in the middle?

My 15-year-old self would be shocked at my day-to-day as an engineer now.

[silisili]

Coming from Java or any heavy OO language is probably a bit of a shock. I've never really missed inheritance with the way it does composition. I think one of the 'mantras' of Go is having the writer know the cost of what they're doing, at the expense of a lot of helpers. The issue is it's a bit inconsistent IMO. Like, they make you iterate to copy a map, but not to copy a slice. It feels like it should lean more heavily one way or the other.

I -would- definitely like more in the standard data structures and algos realm. I used to be more active on golang-nuts, and a lot of the replies to such ideas was "it's so easy to write yourself, look at this 5 liner, why make a package for it." Initially I kinda understood, but years in, after rewriting the same things over and over, it would be nice to one line a lot of this.

[Mawr]

> Where is inheritance?

It's been widely considered as a mistake for about two decades now...

> I couldn't even find a standard linked list.

Even? If you need a linked list, then you have a 0.01% use case and shouldn't expect such a niche data structure to be easily available. That said, https://pkg.go.dev/container/list

> What if I have a list where I need to make lots of insertions in the middle?

Then you should use an array. If you're not making full use of the pointer-y nature of a linked list, you shouldn't be using it.

> Where is the data structures package?

Go only got generics in 2022 so the standard library is lacking in ergonomic data structures.

[kweingar]

Exactly right. My books (and later, college courses) emphasized linked lists and inheritance as fundamental concepts of programming, but the reality as a working engineer is totally different.

When I first encountered Go, I was still a learner and the lack of these things in the language and standard libraries shocked me. But it turns out that they were writing a language more for practical software engineering than for outdated curricula. At the end of the day, structs, slices, and maps cover 99% of what you need!