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> if err != nil is verbose and distracting and happens a lot.

if err != nil is no more or less verbose than if x > y. You may have a point that Go could do branching better in general, but that isn't about errors specifically.

If there is something about errors that happening a lot then that still questions your design. Keep trying new ideas until it isn't happening a lot.

> Surely we can do better than this for error handling?

Surely we can do better for handling of all types? And in theory we can. In practice, it is like the story of generics in Go: Nobody smart enough to figure out a good solution wants to put in the work. Google eventually found a domain expert in generics to bring in as a contractor to come up with a design, but, even assuming Google is still willing to invest a lot of money in the new budget-tightening tech landscape, it is not clear who that person is in this case.

Ian Lance Taylor, as you mention, tried quite hard — with work spanning over many years — in both in both cases to find a solution, which we should commend him for, but that type of design isn't really his primary wheelhouse.

[saghm]

> if err != nil is no more or less verbose than if x > y. You may have a point that Go could do branching better in general, but that isn't about errors specifically.

In practice though, there's not nearly as many cases where someone needs to repeat `if x > y { return x }` a bunch of times in the same function. Whether the issue is "about errors" specifically doesn't really change the relatively common view that it's an annoying pattern. It's not surprising that some people might be more interested in fixing the practical annoyance that they deal with every day even if it's not a solution to the general problem that no one has made progress on for over a decade.

[9rx]

> there's not nearly as many cases where someone needs to repeat `if x > y { return x }` a bunch of times

In my evaluating of a fairly large codebase, if err != nil makes up a small percentage of all if statements. I think you may have a point that branching isn't great, but I'm still not sure trying to focus that into errors isn't missing the forest for the trees.

> it's an annoying pattern.

But, again, if it is so annoying, why is it the pattern you are settling on? There are all kinds of options here, including exception handlers, which Go also supports and even uses for error handling in the standard library (e.g. encoding/json). If your design is bad, make it better.

> It's not surprising that some people might be more interested in fixing

If they were interested in fixing it, they'd have done so already. The Go team does listen and has made it clear they are looking for solutions. Perhaps you mean some people dream about someone else doing it for them? But, again, who is that person going to be?

Philip Wadler, the guy who they eventually found to come up with a viable generics approach, also literally invented monads. If there was ever someone who might have a chance of finding a solution in this case I dare say it is also him, but it is apparent that not even he is willing/able.

[saghm]

> In my evaluating of a fairly large codebase, if err != nil makes up a small percentage of all if statements. I think you may have a point that branching isn't great, but I'm still not sure trying to focus that into errors isn't missing the forest for the trees.

I don't agree with the premise that a frustrating pattern has to comprise a large percentage of the instances of the general syntax for people to want to change it. I can tell you do, but I don't think this is something that people will universally agree with, and I'd argue that telling people "you can't have the opinion you have because it doesn't make sense to me" isn't a very effective or useful statement.

> But, again, if it is so annoying, why is it the pattern you are settling on? There are all kinds of options here, including exception handlers, which Go also supports and even uses for error handling in the standard library (e.g. encoding/json). If your design is bad, make it better.

Empirically, people don't seem to think they have better options, or else they'd be using them. If you try to solve someone's problem by giving them a different tool, and they still say they have the problem even with that, you're probably not going to convince them by telling them "you're doing it bad".

> If they were interested in fixing it, they'd have done so already. The Go team does listen and has made it clear they are looking for solutions. Perhaps you mean some people dream about someone else doing it for them? But, again, who is that person going to be? > Philip Wadler, the guy who they eventually found to come up with a viable generics approach, also literally invented monads. If there was ever someone who might have a chance of finding a solution in this case I dare say it is also him, but it is apparent that not even he is willing/able.

I'd argue there have been plenty of solutions for the specific problem that's being discussed here proposed that are rejected for not being general solutions to the problem that you're describing. My point is that there's a decent number of people who aren't satisfied with this, and would prefer that this is something solved in the specific case rather than the general for the exact reason you pointed out: it doesn't seem like anyone is willing or able to solve it in the general case.

My point is that I think a lot of people want a solution to a specific problem, and you don't want that problem solved unless it solves the general problem that the problem is a specific case of. There's nothing wrong with that, but your objections are mostly phrased as claiming that they don't actually have the problem they have, and I think that's kind of odd. It's totally fair to hold the opinion that solving the specific problem would not be a good idea, but telling people that they don't care about what they care about is just needlessly provocative.

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> I can tell you do

I like nice things. You've identified a clear pain point that I agree with. If something can be better, why not make it better? "I am not able to think beyond the end of my nose, therefore we have to stop there" is a silly response.

> Empirically, people don't seem to think they have better options, or else they'd be using them.

I have read many Go codebases that do a great job with errors, without all the frustration you speak of. I've also read codebases where the authors crated great messes and I know exactly what you're talking about. That isn't saying Go couldn't improve in any way, but it does say that design matters. If your design sucks, fix it. Don't design your code as if you are writing in some other language.

> My point is that there's a decent number of people who aren't satisfied with this

Including the Go team. Hence why Ian Lance Taylor (who isn't on the core team anymore, granted, but was at the time) went as far as to create a build of Go that exhibited the change he wanted to see. But, once it was tried, we learned it wasn't right.

Nobody has been able to find a design that actually works yet. Which is the same problem we had with generics. Everyone and their brother had half-assed proposals, but all of them fell down to actual use. So, again, who is going to be the person who is able to think about the bigger picture and get it right?

Philip Wadler may be that person. There is unlikely anyone else in the world with a more relevant background. But, if he has no interest in doing it, you can't exactly force him — can you? It is clearly not you, else you'd have done it already. It isn't me either. I am much too stupid for that kind of thing.

[saghm]

> I am not able to think beyond the end of my nose, therefore we have to stop there" is a silly response.

This is exactly what I mean by needlessly provocative. You're almost directly saying that people who happen to care more about one specific case than you do are stupid or naive rather than having a different technical opinion than you. If you genuinely think that people who disagree with you are stupid or naive, then I don't understand why you'd bother trying to engage with them. If you think they aren't, but their ideas are, I don't think you're going to be effective at trying to educate them by talking down to them like this.

> Nobody has been able to find a design that actually works yet. Which is the same problem we had with generics. Everyone and their brother had half-assed proposals, but all of them fell down to actual use. So, again, who is going to be the person who is able to think about the bigger picture and get it right?

Whether a design "actually works" is dependent on what the actual thing it's trying to solve is, since a design that works for one problem might not solve another. This is still circular; you're defining the problem to be larger than what the proposals were trying to solve, so of course they didn't solve what you're looking for. You're obviously happier with nothing changing if it doesn't solve the general problem, which is a perfectly valid opinion, but you're talking in absolute terms as if anyone who disagrees with you is objectively wrong rather than having a subjectively different view on what the right tradeoff is.

> Philip Wadler may be that person. There is unlikely anyone else in the world with a more relevant background. But, if he has no interest in doing it, you can't exactly force him — can you? It is clearly not you, else you'd have done it already. It isn't me either. I am much too stupid for that kind of thing.

Once again, this is exactly the reason that I'd argue that it's reasonable to consider a solution to a specific subset of the problem than trying to solve it generally. If nobody is capable of solving a large problem, some people will want to solve a small one instead. The issue isn't that I can't personally see beyond the end of my nose, but that unless someone comes up with the solution, it's impossible to tell the difference between whether it's a few hundred yards outside my field of view or light-years away in another galaxy we'll never reach. I'd argue that there should be some threshold where after enough time, it's worth it to stop holding out for a perfect solution and accept one that only solves an immediate obvious problem, and further that we've reached that threshold. You can disagree with that, but condescending to people who don't have the same view as you isn't going to convince anyone, so I don't understand what the point of it is other than if you're just trying to feel smugly superior.

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> This is exactly what I mean by needlessly provocative.

This doesn't make sense. You might be mistakenly anthropomorphizing HN?

> so of course they didn't solve what you're looking for.

What I am looking for is irrelevant. They straight up didn't solve the needs of Go. It was not me who rejected them, it was the Go community who rejected them, realizing that they won't work for anyone.

> Once again, this is exactly the reason that I'd argue that it's reasonable to consider a solution to a specific subset of the problem than trying to solve it generally.

The Go project is looking for a subset solution. Nobody knows, even within that subset, of how to make it work.

Which clearly includes you. Me too. Obviously if we had a solution, we'd already be using it. But who?

No matter how much you hope and pray, things cannot magically appear. Someone has to do it.