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Re:Facebook Go Libraries by Kiro on Thursday November 13, 2014 @09:06AM (#8601526)
OT but I think GitHub should show tabs as 4 columns. I find Go code is hard to read with all this whitespace.
Re:Facebook Go Libraries by vog on Thursday November 13, 2014 @11:42AM (#8602451)
Actually, you can configure GitHub to do that. Just add ?ts=TABSIZE to the url. For example:

https://github.com/facebookgo/httpcontrol/blob/e815eb2/httpc... (tab size 2)

https://github.com/facebookgo/httpcontrol/blob/e815eb2/httpc... (tab size 4)

https://github.com/facebookgo/httpcontrol/blob/e815eb2/httpc... (tab size 12, seems to be the maximum)

Unfortunately, there seems to be no such entry in the account settings. I'd love to set this value once and for all, or maybe once per file suffix (2 spaces for stuff.xml, 4 spaces for stuff.go).

Re:Facebook Go Libraries by shurcooL on Thursday November 13, 2014 @08:57PM (#8605432)
I, too, would like to see an entry to set my preference for my account. I prefer tabs of size 4.

In fact, this is the only remaining issue I have left at https://shurcool-legacy.github.io/bettertogether/.

Re:Facebook Go Libraries by boomlinde on Thursday November 13, 2014 @09:25AM (#8601616)
No, it should show it as tabs, because that's what it is. Ideally, it should show it as 8 column tabs, as that is what gofmt assumes by default.
Re:Facebook Go Libraries by Kiro on Thursday November 13, 2014 @09:44AM (#8601711)
Sorry, changed "spaces" to "columns".
Re:Facebook Go Libraries by boomlinde on Thursday November 13, 2014 @10:09AM (#8601845)
... and the only reason for it to be four columns is that you personally find it hard to read, or do you have another, more compelling argument against using 8 column tabs?
Re:Facebook Go Libraries by possibilistic on Thursday November 13, 2014 @10:29AM (#8601963)
Personally, I find 8 columns to be an incredible waste of horizontal space. I frequently place editor windows/panes side by side, and using 8 columns or spaces wastes valuable screen real estate.

But this isn't just a reaction rooted in practicality. To me, this looks and feels absurd. It kind of hurts to read. Again, this is just my personal take.

I prefer scope indentation of any kind to render as 4 spaces, but I'm okay with 2 as well.

Re:Facebook Go Libraries by Dewie on Thursday November 13, 2014 @10:57AM (#8602171)
I agree. For me, I want enough indentation to make the structure obvious. 8 columns is way overkill in that regard.
Re:Facebook Go Libraries by esrauch on Thursday November 13, 2014 @11:18AM (#8602309)
I'm kind of surprised that 8 column tabs is even being discussed, I thought 2 or 4 were the normal values?
Re:Facebook Go Libraries by Kiro on Thursday November 13, 2014 @10:41AM (#8602046)
> and the only reason for it to be four columns is that you personally find it hard to read

Yes, it was just a personal opinion.

Re:Facebook Go Libraries by boomlinde on Thursday November 13, 2014 @01:42PM (#8603218)
But not personal enough not to be the basis for an argument about what github should do to display Go code.
Re:Facebook Go Libraries by Kiro on Thursday November 13, 2014 @02:55PM (#8603662)
What are you arguing about exactly? Am I not allowed to think Github should display them as 4 columns?
Re:Facebook Go Libraries by ominous_prime on Thursday November 13, 2014 @02:05PM (#8603371)
I don't think gofmt assumes any width for tabs. It, prints `\t` for indentation, and that's all.
Re:Facebook Go Libraries by boomlinde on Thursday November 13, 2014 @06:47PM (#8604924)
It has the -tabwidth option, defaulting to 8. I have yet to figure out what it's used for, but presumably there is some case where it is used for alignment.
Re:Facebook Go Libraries by enneff on Thursday November 13, 2014 @07:20PM (#8605082)
> It has the -tabwidth option, defaulting to 8

It was only used when you invoked the other option to use spaces instead of tabs. Both options are now removed. gofmt doesn't care how wide your tabstops are.

Re:Facebook Go Libraries by tuxone on Thursday November 13, 2014 @09:19AM (#8601582)
Or better, we should save source code files replacing tabs with spaces. That's the best practice that makes everybody happy.
Re:Facebook Go Libraries by custardcream on Thursday November 13, 2014 @09:20AM (#8601588)
Go uses tabs. That's the law. It's in the documentation.

Groups of spaces and tabs are semantically different. Tabs mean indentation. Spaces mean spaces.

Re:Facebook Go Libraries by tuxone on Thursday November 13, 2014 @09:25AM (#8601620)
My apologies, thank you for the clarification.
Re:Facebook Go Libraries by Artemis2 on Thursday November 13, 2014 @11:19AM (#8602313)
Spaces are tolerated, but the usage of tabs is very encouraged.
Re:Facebook Go Libraries by treehau5 on Thursday November 13, 2014 @09:30AM (#8601650)
>Tabs mean indentation.

Sorry but this is false. The only thing a tab means, is tab.

Please provide your reasoning for the down voting. Thank you.

Re:Facebook Go Libraries by custardcream on Thursday November 13, 2014 @09:47AM (#8601724)
The dictionary in front of me disagrees:

"A key on a computer keyboard that, when pressed, inserts a special ASCII character used for formatting text, as in indenting a line or block of text."

Actually going back it means tabulation which was an early form of alignment of tables on typewriters. The tab key advanced the carriage to the next tabulation point. It was repurposed as a way of indenting code later and it has become an additional definition of that fact.

(I'm old enough to have owned a typewriter, a nice Selectric one as well ;-)

Re:Facebook Go Libraries by treehau5 on Thursday November 13, 2014 @10:33AM (#8601989)
We are talking about computer semantics which exist in a discretized world, not english language semantics. By your logic, the word integer would be any number not a fraction or decimal down to negative infinity up unto positive infinity. There is no concept of infinity on a computer.

Anyways, that's besides the point, and I think you missed the meaning behind my comment.

The reason why a tab space cannot semantically mean indentation in our world, is because nobody can agree on what that indentation should be. Since you are old enough to have owned a typewriter, maybe you are old enough to remember that by legacy, a tab was equivalent to exactly 8 spaces, and much of our software that runs the internet makes that assumption. Now however, people are saying "use tab to mean indent and everyone can have their way" To quote mikko, "There is no style guide or coding conventions saying that the tab character should be the indent. This assumption is easy to make because it allows you to stick your head into the sand, ignore the surrounding world and by singing “let the users pick their own tab width” mantra."

Again, this wasn't to start a tab vs spaces war for go, and why go chose tabs. It's fine to make a choice, but it was your second statement that provoked my comment.

Re:Facebook Go Libraries by custardcream on Thursday November 13, 2014 @10:36AM (#8602008)
I get what you mean but a tab is purposely meaningless and unqualified.

It means 1 indent, not 8 spaces, 3 bananas or one tree. It is a unit. How the user displays that is up to them.

Re:Facebook Go Libraries by trebor on Thursday November 13, 2014 @12:01PM (#8602577)
This. Absolutely this.

I used to hate tabs and want 2 spaces only, until I started working with other developers. Then suddenly tabs made sense, especially when you've got IDEs coercing every edited file to a person's indentation standard. Standardize on the tab and the pain goes away.

Re:Facebook Go Libraries by munificent on Thursday November 13, 2014 @12:35PM (#8602765)
> There is no concept of infinity on a computer.

Sure there is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_754-1985#Positive_and_nega...

Re:Facebook Go Libraries by treehau5 on Thursday November 13, 2014 @01:54PM (#8603310)
Ok sorry. There is no true representation of infinity.
Re:Facebook Go Libraries by stickfigure on Friday November 14, 2014 @03:23AM (#8606281)
...or Scotsmen.
Re:Facebook Go Libraries by aric on Thursday November 13, 2014 @01:01PM (#8602930)
Semantics is contingent upon meaning. Meaning varies and changes. Meaning is defined over time. That's the case with most words. In formatting text, it's as semantic to say that tabs are for "tabulation" and "indentation" as much as spaces are for "space" and "spacing characters." Tabs have always been semantically better as indentation in computing.
Re:Facebook Go Libraries by halostatue on Thursday November 13, 2014 @11:01AM (#8602195)
The Go team has made the decision that the language supports tabs for indentation, and it’s enforced by `go fmt`.
Re:Facebook Go Libraries by andrewprock on Thursday November 13, 2014 @11:54AM (#8602521)
While this is clearly the wrong decision, one has to applaud the Go team for building `go fmt` and thus putting and end to unproductive discussions about formatting. (Although it would have been nice if `go fmt` didn't change code semantics.)
Re:Facebook Go Libraries by dilap on Thursday November 13, 2014 @12:51PM (#8602866)
Wait, why is it clearly the wrong decision? I think using tabs for indentation is great.

I agree gofmt is amazing, and for any language I'd happily trade whatever my personal style is for consistency and and gofmt-like tool.

Can gofmt really change semantics? I would assume that's a bug?

Re:Facebook Go Libraries by ansible on Thursday November 13, 2014 @01:45PM (#8603246)
Can gofmt really change semantics? I would assume that's a bug?

It is definitely not supposed to change semantics. If you ever see an instance of that, then it is a big fat bug and should be reported to the developers ASAP.

I doubt you'll see such a bug though. The language is designed to be easy for a computer to parse.

Re:Facebook Go Libraries by andrewprock on Thursday November 13, 2014 @01:00PM (#8602928)
It not a particularly interesting discussion to have. The short of it is, if you only ever use one tool (or family of tools) to look at code (say an IDE), then tabs are not unreasonable. Once you start using multiple families of tools on multiple machines, now you have to maintain T*M tab configurations, which is awful.

The "standard" alternative (e.g. the google c++ style guide) advises 2-space indentation with 80 column lines. That specific format works well with almost every tool in existence. Tabs, not so much.

You can google "jwz tabs" to get a more in depth discussion. It's not a "big" deal, and as noted, in many ways it's better to standardize on the "wrong" decision than to constantly hash it out over formatting sugar.

Re:Facebook Go Libraries by dilap on Thursday November 13, 2014 @07:49PM (#8605189)
I think this stuff is actually pretty interesting, it's programmer tools UX!

I use emacs and various command line tools. Tabs don't give me problems. FWIW.

Re:Facebook Go Libraries by couchand on Thursday November 13, 2014 @12:01PM (#8602575)
I'm relatively new to Go, and like you I wholeheartedly agree with the idea of solving formatting once and being done with it (and as an aside, I agree that tabs are the wrong decision).

It was my impression that gofmt was essentially a pretty printer. Can you point to examples where it changes semantics?

Re:Facebook Go Libraries by skj on Thursday November 13, 2014 @12:57PM (#8602911)
It does not change semantics. If it does in some case, that's a bug and please report it.

Edit: I see, import order can affect the order that the init()s in different packages are invoked, presumably. I stand corrected.

Edit 2: But that should not matter since the language doesn't specify any dependence on that.

Re:Facebook Go Libraries by ominous_prime on Thursday November 13, 2014 @01:58PM (#8603337)
no, the order is unspecified, so it shouldn't be relied upon. The only order enforced is that imported packages are initialized before the package itself.
Re:Facebook Go Libraries by MatthewJBrown on Thursday November 13, 2014 @02:19PM (#8603443)
In fact, you should be glad that "go fmt" exposed the fact you were relying on something that you should not have. Better to find a bug sooner rather than later, and relying on implementation details of your particular language implementation is a bug.
Re:Facebook Go Libraries by couchand on Thursday November 13, 2014 @07:01PM (#8604993)
It seems to me like it would be very much in line with the Go philosophy to automatically uncover this in some way other than just an impossible-to-debug pre-compile sort, like disallowing it on a language level. Perhaps that's a Hard Problem, though, so not a reasonable request.
Re:Facebook Go Libraries by skj on Friday November 14, 2014 @07:05AM (#8606723)
Well, they could do what they did with map iteration: make it happen arbitrarily different each program execution.
Re:Facebook Go Libraries by couchand on Friday November 14, 2014 @08:35AM (#8606999)
Breaking it randomly and requiring debugging is not the same as telling you you're doing something wrong and where.
Re:Facebook Go Libraries by skj on Friday November 14, 2014 @11:55AM (#8608113)
Worked for maps :)

The same exact argument applies. The code was broken to begin with, the implementation behavior did not break anything.

And, just like with map iteration ordering, it's very difficult/impossible for the compiler to say "hey don't depend on this!".

The only way that I can think of to get this concept (that import order in code and init() order in runtime are unrelated) is to have things break.

Re:Facebook Go Libraries by couchand on Friday November 14, 2014 @12:49PM (#8608409)
I guess I've personally never seen the value of static initializers (in other languages at least), they always seem like the source of hard-to-find bugs. So perhaps that's really where my complaint is. Is there a compelling use for them in Go over explicit initialization?

I suppose if the runtime randomizes things, at least you would never experience it consistently working in the first place, so maybe the issue wouldn't ever come up.

Re:Facebook Go Libraries by skj on Friday November 14, 2014 @01:32PM (#8608674)
Right, that's the idea.

Regarding static initializers, I use them for precompiling regexps and templates, but not much more than that.

Re:Facebook Go Libraries by andrewprock on Thursday November 13, 2014 @12:54PM (#8602896)
go fmt will reorder your imports, which means that if there is an import ordering dependency, it will either be exposed (or hidden) by go fmt.
Re:Facebook Go Libraries by couchand on Thursday November 13, 2014 @06:59PM (#8604979)
I'm just going to say whoever is downvoting this is a jerk. This comment is actually correct. Whether or not it reflects the way you believe things should happen, this is an accurate description of how things do happen (I assume, based on the other comments, I don't actually know myself).
Re:Facebook Go Libraries by ominous_prime on Thursday November 13, 2014 @09:17PM (#8605499)
Yes and no. `gofmt` is a tool to make your code follow certain style guidelines, and the ordering of imports is part of those guidelines. You are always free to ignore the guidelines, but then don't complain about the tool which is created to enforce them.

It is also incorrect to rely on the order of import initialization at all, because it's undefined, implementation specific and may change.

Re:Facebook Go Libraries by couchand on Thursday November 13, 2014 @11:20PM (#8605793)
So it sounds like... yes and yes. Guidelines are guidelines. If they are more than guidelines they must be enforced at the language level.

Undefined behavior is another thing. Surely, it's poor form to rely on undefined behavior. However, that doesn't mean it isn't possible for such a situation to arise. An accurate description of how that can happen doesn't deserve a downvote.

On the contrary, it's quite valuable for a newbie (like myself) to learn the facts, not just the dogma. Downvoting an accurate description of the behavior of the tool because you think the situation shouldn't arise in the first place is simply a misplaced use of a downvote.

Re:Facebook Go Libraries by ominous_prime on Thursday November 13, 2014 @01:54PM (#8603313)
you should never have an import order dependency, since initialization order is unspecified.
Re:Facebook Go Libraries by andrewprock on Friday November 14, 2014 @06:26PM (#8610151)
Re:Facebook Go Libraries by ominous_prime on Saturday November 15, 2014 @01:43PM (#8612296)
I say that's great! It helped uncover an otherwise unnoticed bug.
Re:Facebook Go Libraries by TOMDM on Thursday November 13, 2014 @06:10PM (#8604771)
I feel it's worth pointing out the irony in "While this is clearly the wrong decision" and "thus putting and end to unproductive discussions about formatting" considering this is part of a discussion about Go's formatting.
Re:Facebook Go Libraries by codygman on Thursday November 13, 2014 @02:01PM (#8603357)
That's only if the developers use go fmt though. The only place I've worked at that used Go didn't use go fmt.
Re:Facebook Go Libraries by dilap on Thursday November 13, 2014 @08:51PM (#8605412)
That's craziness. Why wouldn't you?
Re:Facebook Go Libraries by codygman on Thursday November 13, 2014 @11:23PM (#8605800)
"Sometimes people work faster with code formatted like they are used to" - Code Creator "Well, if we all standardize on the same style we can get used to working faster with the same format giving everyone a net win" - Me "Well we'll have to do it after... later... deadlines... shipping" - Code Creator
Re:Facebook Go Libraries by _ak on Thursday November 13, 2014 @01:08PM (#8602981)
Why? n spaces encode a specific preference for indentation, while tabs just represent a level of indentation. How many columns these actually are is entirely up to personal preference and editor configuration. That's why tabs are always superior for indentation.
Re:Facebook Go Libraries by andrewprock on Thursday November 13, 2014 @02:38PM (#8603574)
It's actually quite a bit more subtle than that. Even `go fmt` uses tabs to format indentation, but uses spaces to format alignment. This is distinct from mechanical typewriters which used variably sized tab-stops to handle tab alignment.