On Fri, Feb 10, 2017 at 10:04 PM, Keynan Pratt <kpr...@atlassian.com> wrote:
> Yes it CAN be implemented that way, but that throws away type information,
> and makes code less readable.
The question of compile-time type information boils down to the generics issue.
> It also seems to conflate the difference
> between language and library, i suppose go has already trod that bridge.
> What I'm asking for is something that can be used to reason about programs
> at compile time. It seems like an opaque type at runtime wouldn't achieve
> this. For example, if you where to implement this type could I still do
>
> var x interface{} = nil
>
> ?
>
> If you have weak as a language feature you can make that illegal, insisting
> that only
>
> var x weak interface{} = nil
>
> is allowed, and any program written for a compiler that enforces
> non-nullable strong pointers would be valid to compile with the official
> compiler. Fast compile time is great, it's part of the reason I love go. But
> it would be nice to have a flag I can turn on that gets me some of those
> wonderful correctness checking features that you see in languages with
> stronger type systems. Avoiding nulls just seems like the bare minimum. So
> those are the things we theoretically get. On the other hand what is the
> cost of adding this? I suspect it is (very) small and I also acknowledge it
> will never get added. I just think that's a shame.
I'm sorry, but that doesn't seem to me like Go. Go is a language with
a simple type system. I can understand how weak pointers could fit
into Go. But once you start saying that we are going to reject
storing nil in an interface value unless it is weak, then you are
greatly complicating the type system. The cost of adding that kind of
complexity to the language is high. The cost is not in
implementation--though I don't see offhand how to implement it, since
now non-weak interfaces have no zero value--the cost is in requiring
everybody learning the language to learn a complex new concept.
Ian
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