Half a million lines of Go

Re:Half a million lines of Go by cies on Monday May 17, 2021 @10:42AM (#27183985)

> Is it just a timing thing? It seems like explicit nullability came onto the mainstream a few years after Go debuted, but maybe it was already discussed in academic circles before then.

I know OCaml[1] has it ('93) and Haskell[2] ('90). Also the claim that implicit nullability is a mistake was made in 2009[3] (around the same time Go was released).

Given the seniority of the designers of Go, I expect they had knowledge of this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OCaml

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haskell_(programming_language)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Hoare

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Half a million lines of Go by tome on Monday May 17, 2021 @11:47AM (#27184791)

ML had "it" in 1973!

... if "it" is even a thing. I would say that it's not, rather implicit nullability is the thing. It's just not something you'd do in a typed language unless you really specifically chose it. That's how Hoare could claim it was his billion dollar mistake. Implicit nullability was a thing he (and subsequent language designers) opted in to.

[ Parent | on HN ]