this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
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Sometimes I think Go was specifically made for Google to dictate its own preferences on the rest of us like some kind of power play. It enforces one single style of programming too much.
Is this a hard error? Like it doesn't compile at all?
Isn't there something like
#[allow(unused)]in Rust you can put over the declaration?Yes it is a hard error and Go does not compile then. You can do
_ = foobarto fake variable usage. I think this is okay for testing purposes.I think that's even worse because it increases the likelihood you'll forget you faked that variable just for testing
Worse than not having a unused variable check at all? Dunno, the underscore assignment are very visible for me and stand out on every code read and review.
Yes, worse, because now if you want to use the underscore assignment to indicate that you really want to discard that variable - it gets confused with underscore assignments that were put there "temporarily" for experimentation purpose.
Exactly.
Say I'm having some issue with a function. I comment out half the function to see if that's where the weirdness is. Golang says "unused variable, I refuse to compile this dogshit!" I completely fool Golang by just using
_ = foo. Yes, I was correct, that's where the problem was. I rewrite that section of the code, and test it out, things work perfectly. Only now, it turns out I'm not usingfooanymore, and Golang has no idea because I so cleverly fooled it with_ = foo.Now, something that could be caught by a linter and expressed as a warning is missed by the language police entirely, and may make it into production code.
Police the code that people put into a repository / share with others. Don't police the code that people just want to test on their own.
Ew, that's awful. Go is not one of my programming languages but I had always held it in high esteem because Ken Thompson and Rob Pike were involved in it.
That's the main reason it has had any success. It's not that it's a good language, it's just that it has good references.
Honestly, it does not happen often that I have a ln unused variable that I want to keep. In my mind it is the same thing when wanting to call a function that does not exists. Also my editor is highlighting error Long before I try to compile, so this is fine too for me.
The underscore is used in production code too. It's a legitimate way to tell the compiler to discard the object because you don't intend to use the pointer/value.