So the videos of the Gophercon 2014 are being made available.

Rob Pike did the keynote. At the expected question about generics,
his answer was "There are no plans for generics. I said we're going to leave the language; we're done.".

Discussion ongoing on HN,

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7708904

--
Paulo

On Wednesday, 7 May 2014 at 15:54:42 UTC, Paulo Pinto wrote:
> So the videos of the Gophercon 2014 are being made available.
>
> Rob Pike did the keynote. At the expected question about generics,
> his answer was "There are no plans for generics. I said we're going to leave the language; we're done.".
>
> Discussion ongoing on HN,
>
> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7708904
>
> --
> Paulo

This statement doesn't sound like the "no generics" is the important part. It seems more like they have no plans to make Go 2.0, at least not with it bringing big breaking changes as people keep pointing out will happen.

But that is probably reading too much into it, I can't imagine he wanted to put that much information in the statement. But then again I haven't seen any official word on Go 2.0 (similar to D3).

On Thursday, 8 May 2014 at 18:29:45 UTC, Jesse Phillips wrote:
> This statement doesn't sound like the "no generics" is the important part. It seems more like they have no plans to make Go 2.0, at least not with it bringing big breaking changes as people keep pointing out will happen.
>
> But that is probably reading too much into it, I can't imagine he wanted to put that much information in the statement. But then again I haven't seen any official word on Go 2.0 (similar to D3).

Ah, well context around it removes all my claims. It is clear he is saying that Go 1.x will not have generics.

On Wednesday, 7 May 2014 at 15:54:42 UTC, Paulo Pinto wrote:
> So the videos of the Gophercon 2014 are being made available.
>
> Rob Pike did the keynote. At the expected question about generics,
> his answer was "There are no plans for generics. I said we're going to leave the language; we're done.".
>
> Discussion ongoing on HN,
>
> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7708904
>
> --
> Paulo

I agree with Paulo. At 54:40 he says what Paulo has already quoted. And "we are done" means "that's it, folks". It even sounds to me like the language is finished and it will be left like that.

-- Bienlein

On Thursday, 8 May 2014 at 21:09:38 UTC, Bienlein wrote:
> I agree with Paulo. At 54:40 he says what Paulo has already quoted. And "we are done" means "that's it, folks". It even sounds to me like the language is finished and it will be left like that.

Well, he had previously stated that there would be no breaking changes, and that if there were changes it would have to be called "go version 2 or something". So when generics were brought up he stated that there were no plans for generics and "I said we are going to leave the language, we are done" (with version 1 semantics).

Ola..

On Thu, 2014-05-08 at 19:37 +0000, Jesse Phillips via Digitalmars-d
wrote:
[…]
> Ah, well context around it removes all my claims. It is clear he is saying that Go 1.x will not have generics.

Given the statements about backward compatibility there is no way Go 1.x can have generics. I'm fairly sure the core Go team are convinced the interface way and manual "overloading" is the way to go, and that generics are an unnecessary burden. Many people argue they are wrong without actually trying the style of programming inherent in the language.

-- 
Russel. ============================================================================= Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.winder@ekiga.net 41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: russel@winder.org.uk London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk  skype: russel_winder

On Friday, 9 May 2014 at 05:22:36 UTC, Russel Winder via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On Thu, 2014-05-08 at 19:37 +0000, Jesse Phillips via Digitalmars-d
> wrote:
> […]
>> Ah, well context around it removes all my claims. It is clear he is saying that Go 1.x will not have generics.
>
> Given the statements about backward compatibility there is no way Go 1.x
> can have generics. I'm fairly sure the core Go team are convinced the
> interface way and manual "overloading" is the way to go, and that
> generics are an unnecessary burden. Many people argue they are wrong
> without actually trying the style of programming inherent in the
> language.

You mean programming in

- Turbo Pascal with object as root
- Oberon with object as root
- Smalltalk with object as root
- Modula-3 with ROOTANY as root
- C++ without templates
- Java with object as root
- C# with object as root

Me, I know what it means.

--
Paulo

> Well, he had previously stated that there would be no breaking changes, and that if there were changes it would have to be called "go version 2 or something". So when generics were brought up he stated that there were no plans for generics and "I said we are going to leave the language, we are done" (with version 1 semantics).
>
> Ola..

Robert Pike says in this thread (https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=de#!topic/golang-nuts/3fOIZ1VLn1o):

"Go has type switches, and therefore no need for the Visitor Pattern.". He has exactly the same mindset as Niklaus Wirth and Oberon never got templates. Future will tell... Would be a nice thing to bet a dime on whether Go will have generics or not. I bet not ;-).

On Friday, 9 May 2014 at 07:05:59 UTC, Bienlein wrote:
>
>> Well, he had previously stated that there would be no breaking changes, and that if there were changes it would have to be called "go version 2 or something". So when generics were brought up he stated that there were no plans for generics and "I said we are going to leave the language, we are done" (with version 1 semantics).
>>
>> Ola..
>
> Robert Pike says in this thread (https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=de#!topic/golang-nuts/3fOIZ1VLn1o):
>
> "Go has type switches, and therefore no need for the Visitor Pattern.". He has exactly the same mindset as Niklaus Wirth and Oberon never got templates. Future will tell... Would be a nice thing to bet a dime on whether Go will have generics or not. I bet not ;-).

Oberon did eventually get some basic form of templates in Active Oberon, but that was not under Wirth's supervision.

He actually went into the other direction by making a minimalist version of Oberon with Oberon-07.

I had the opportunity to meet Wirth at CERN, when he and a few ETHZ members took part on the Oberon Day, back in 2004.

He is really great guy, but he could not understand why Oberon was being ignored in the industry. As he expected the desire for quality would drive developers to it.

In a similar vein to Rob Pike writing the blog post why he thinks C++ developers don't care for Go, Niklaus Wirth wrote a long article about the industry lack of interest in minimalist languages.


The problem they fail to understand, or acknowledge, is that large scale architectures in simple languages usually lead to complex code with lots of boilerplate.

--
Paulo

On 08/05/2014 22:09, Bienlein wrote:
> On Wednesday, 7 May 2014 at 15:54:42 UTC, Paulo Pinto wrote:
>> So the videos of the Gophercon 2014 are being made available.
>>
>> Rob Pike did the keynote. At the expected question about generics,
>> his answer was "There are no plans for generics. I said we're going to
>> leave the language; we're done.".
>>
>> Discussion ongoing on HN,
>>
>> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7708904
>>
>> --
>> Paulo
>
> I agree with Paulo. At 54:40 he says what Paulo has already quoted. And
> "we are done" means "that's it, folks". It even sounds to me like the
> language is finished and it will be left like that.
>
> -- Bienlein

I find this aspect much more interesting than the "get generics or not" one. So Rob Pike and the other guy is leaving the language then?
I wonder what that means for the future of Go. I guess the community will take over, but will there be someone from Google still in charge? And how many resources/manpower from Google will they still dedicate to Go?

The thing about generics is that, if Go where to break through and become a mainstream popular language, generics would likely be added to it somehow. Maybe in the main language, as in Go 2.0, or maybe as side-project/language-extension (Go++ ?) that someone else would take. Similar to Java which tried to keep the language as simple as possible in the beginning (no operator overload, no metaprogramming or generics, etc), but eventually saw the shortcoming as too significant.. (even if the only thing they added was type-parameterization generics, but even just that makes a big difference)

-- 
Bruno Medeiros
https://twitter.com/brunodomedeiros