Ian Lance Taylor <i...@golang.org>:
> As I've said before, I would very much like to avoid adding many
> different names to the language.
I've been staying out of the forward-looking language-design discussions so far,
and intend to keep pretty quiet on that front until I feel my grasp on
idomatic Go as she is now spoke is more complete.
This, however, is not a Go-specific issue. Ian is absolutely right to be
conservative here on general principle. Go as it stands now is an admirably
compact language; its keyword inventory is small, its syntax is simple, and
the whole fits relatively easily into a Mark I brain.
It is easy, in a zealous reach to extend the expressiveness of a
language, to undervalue compactness until you have lost it. At which
point you find yourself in a maze of twisty little language
constructs, all different, and realize that the friction cost of using
the language has zoomed, subtly vitiating the gain from any individual
feature.
I'm not here to say I think every single decision in the Go design is
perfect. But I think the minimalist style of the language was - and
is - a very wise choice. Like Ian, I will cast a very skeptical eye
on any extension proposals that seem to add more *stuff* - more
keywords, more overloading of existing constructs (and underneath
them, more semantic elaboration) without a very high gain in
expressiveness per *each individual* increment of complexity.
I wasn't planning to name any names when I began this rant, and maybe
I still shouldn't, but...now I think it must be said in order to
underline the general point. Those of you advocating generics by
contract, in particular, need to think hard about what they would do
to compactness.
--
<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a>
My work is funded by the Internet Civil Engineering Institute: https://icei.org
Please visit their site and donate: the civilization you save might be your own.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"golang-nuts" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to golang-nuts+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
