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Golang be like (i.imgur.com)
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[-] philm@programming.dev 18 points 1 year ago

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?

[-] flame3244@lemmy.world 27 points 1 year ago

Yes it is a hard error and Go does not compile then. You can do _ = foobar to fake variable usage. I think this is okay for testing purposes.

[-] MonkCanatella@sh.itjust.works 29 points 1 year ago

I think that's even worse because it increases the likelihood you'll forget you faked that variable just for testing

[-] flame3244@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] AeonFelis@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

[-] merc@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 year ago

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 using foo anymore, 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.

[-] nomadjoanne@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] merc@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] flame3244@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] AstridWipenaugh@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

[-] HiddenLayer5@lemmy.ml 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Never really coded in Go outside of trying it out, but as far as I know it's a hard error.

this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
1425 points (98.0% liked)

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