[tapirl]

Go was my favorite language for a long time, and I have written many books and articles about it. However, since the release of Go 1.22 [1], that is no longer the case. Go 1.22 damaged Go's reputation for promoting explicitness and maintaining strong backward compatibility.

[1]: https://go101.org/blog/2024-03-01-for-loop-semantic-changes-...

[bccdee]

for-loop variable capture was maybe the #1 worst decision in the language. It was never what you wanted. I appreciate Go's commitment to backwards-compatibility, but in this case breaking it was the right choice.

[tapirl]

It is only right for for-each loops.

For 3-clause-for loops, if you have read https://go101.org/blog/2024-03-01-for-loop-semantic-changes-... carefully, it is hard to think it is right.

[bccdee]

All the examples in that article are very exotic.

  for i, p := 0, (*int)(nil); p == nil; fmt.Println(p == &i) {
    p = &i
  }

Be honest, how many times have you actually seen code which depended on the address of a variable declared in a 3-clause for-loop remaining stable across loop iterations? Nobody does this. It's extremely weird and un-idiomaic. Heck, 3-clause for-loops are somewhat uncommon in and of themselves. Conversely, everyone who writes Go has experienced unintuitive capture issues with for-range loops.

Are you actually aware of any breakages this change has caused?

[tapirl]

This one is just an example to demo one case of backward-capability breaking.

> All the examples in that article are very exotic.

Have you carefully read that article? All? You must be kidding. The article shows several cases used in practice.

[nacozarina]

this is a repeating pattern with languages; there's no commitment to design coherency, no governance, just a mad scamper to stuff features into the project until it becomes an absurd caricature of itself.

C++ did it so egregiously & disastrously you'd think language maintainers would have been scared straight. No, like moths to a flame, it is the preferred hill to die on.

This is how C99 keeps winning when it bleeping should not. It's settled science, however imperfect. It's not getting rearranged because someone read a blog post. It has stability in real-world clock-on-the-wall terms like nothing else.

[tapirl]

The change made in Go 1.22 for 3-clause-for loops is not a new feature. It simply broke backward compatibility and old Go principles. It is much worse than C++'s stuff features.

[tommica]

What is your language of choice now then?

[tapirl]

zig now.