Good union types in Go would probably need types without a zero value

Re:Good union types in Go would probably need types without ... by AnimalMuppet on Monday December 09, 2024 @10:19AM (#42366985)

He spent decades at Bell Labs. He was also, IIRC, in his seventies.

So a more charitable interpretation would be that most of his colleagues are in their 20s and just out of school with a CS degree. He doesn't think they can (productively) use the languages the cutting-edge PL researchers generate.

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Re:Good union types in Go would probably need types without ... by tubthumper8 on Monday December 09, 2024 @11:17AM (#42367566)

Just a clarification (that doesn't really change the point), he was in his early fifties when Go was first released

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Re:Good union types in Go would probably need types without ... by db48x on Monday December 09, 2024 @10:33AM (#42367124)

Like I said, he clearly doesn’t think very highly of them. A fresh college graduate could learn how to use sum types in a day or two.

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Re:Good union types in Go would probably need types without ... by AnimalMuppet on Monday December 09, 2024 @11:03AM (#42367430)

Sure they could. Sum types aren't in go, not because fresh grads can't learn how to use sum types, but because they couldn't see a clean way to add it to go and have it fit with the other stuff they were putting in go, which they thought was more important.

But trying to get new grads to use Haskell on the scale of a 10 million line code base, and have them not make a mess of it? That's the kind of thing he didn't trust the new grads with.

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