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Golang be like (i.imgur.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/programmer_humor@programming.dev
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[–] 27 points 2 years ago (3 children)

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.

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  • [–] 29 points 2 years ago (1 child)

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

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years 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.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years 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.

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