I would say the question mark improves readability, compared to having to check/return error codes by hand after every function call.
To your more general point, the language is pretty much established and syntax features are added very rarely. I think one more feature, let guards, is coming down the pipe soon, but other than that I wouldn't be surprised if the surface syntax never changes again.
Which is one of my complaints about Go.
result, err = doSomething();
if err != nil {
...
}
result, err = doSomething2();
if err != nil {
...
}In this case it's a welcomed convenience. Have you used `thiserror` and `anyhow` crates ? They may alter your judgement on that point.
Who needs a for loop when you have while?
(Although, in Rust, `if` is also actually just sugar over `match`, so, uh...)
> it means something more specific and restricted than a general while
Sure, but that's still sugar. That's what sugar is.
Want to know something really crazy? In Rust, the `if` keyword is also just syntactic sugar over `match`. Still finding bits of grey matter on the walls from when I learned that one.
However it represents something that I don't like, which is trading language surface complexity and readability for programmer convenience. It is not something that gives you more power, just something that makes code a bit easier to write. Also there was seemingly not that much push-back against the feature which makes me a bit uneasy. Not sure why that is to be honest.
I don't want to start a discussion about the question mark operator specifically. That's not important to me. What I like to gauge is the general culture around the language itself and the community around it. Half devil's advocate, half uncertainty driven.