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Golang be like (i.imgur.com)

submitted 1 year ago by mycroftholmess@lemm.ee to c/programmer_humor@programming.dev

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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 2 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 12 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.