On Wed, Jan 20, 2021 at 4:22 PM atd...@gmail.com <atd...@gmail.com> wrote:
> It' has probably been discussed somewhere but I am curious about what > might have been the issues when considering an implementation of generics > that would parameterized packages? > > You can take a look at Standard ML / Ocaml "functors" if you want to see an exploration of what it entails as a consequence. It's a completely different approach, and often you'd find you need to improve the module/package system of the language in order to make it feel fluid for a programmer. For Go, it would require quite some language extension before it would be viable (or rather, that is my hunch). One particular important point is that you tend to end up with a "stratification" of sorts. The module system becomes a language of its own, on top of a core language and they don't mix. The stratification isn't required though, as shown by Andreas Rossberg in his 1ML paper. In Go terms, you remove structs, and a struct is a package containing a "var" section. Now, parameterization of packages becomes parametrization of interfaces/structs as a result. What Rossberg shows is that you can create a language out of this idea, and said language "works" insofar it's possible to give it a sensible semantics. Note: for this to work, you really want packages to be nestable inside packages. And you also want to decouple packages entirely from the file system, by which time you have a language entirely different from Go. -- 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. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/golang-nuts/CAGrdgiVw4qb2-%2BmDr5174-EYk5mFd7-_gAF2RHmnu1PS4yWHJQ%40mail.gmail.com.
