Conversation

The parens for the type parameters is the one thing Go got right in the entire language.

Quote Tweet

Olivier Mengué

· Jul 31, 2019

Replying to @omengue @golang and @ianlancetaylor

My main concern is the syntax. Parentheses for type parameters are hard to distinguish from parentheses value parameters. The FAQ mentions that F<T> and F[T] have been considered and rejected. The pain will be on the users to "to keep the parser simple".

2

7

it does mean that you can now have a total of four sets of parens in a function def: func (type T) (s Foo*) Bar(arg1 Baz, arg2 Baz2) (bool, Quux)

1

3

not ... terrible, and I still think it's an overall good choice, but still kinda weird

2

Joshua Yanovski

@awesomeintheory

It makes it clearer that generics are functions applied to types, I like it a lot. Gives Go a leg up on the path to dependent types!

2

3

Brendan Zabarauskas

I guess one issue is that one set of params are implicit, the other not 😜

3

2

Brendan Zabarauskas

Replying to

@awesomeintheory

Had a go at explaining how it corresponds to System F here (might have got something wrong though): lobste.rs/s/inq4ru/why_g

1:53 PM · Aug 1, 2019Twitter Web App