Another "Go is Python-like" article.

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Sat, 22 May 2010 12:13:30 -0700, Patrick Maupin wrote about the lack 
of exceptions in Go:

> Looking at their rationale, it is appears that one or more of the
> primary go developers had to deal way too often with people who overuse
> and abuse exceptions, so they are reverting to an almost childish "I'll
> fix their little red wagon!  When they have to use *my* language, they
> won't be able to do that anymore!" kind of mentality. Another
> possibility is that they viewed the complexity of exceptions as
> interfering with their primary goals, and felt it necessary to
> rationalize their absence after the fact.

That's two possible explanations. A third is that they genuinely believe 
that exceptions lead to poor programming practice and left them out, just 
as the designers of many other languages believe that goto leads to poor 
practice and leave it out as well.

I don't think there's necessarily anything "childish" about choosing to 
leave out a language feature that you think is bad from a language you 
design.


    Indeed, when I design my killer language, the identifiers 
    "foo" and "bar" will be reserved words, never used, and not 
    even mentioned in the reference manual. Any program using 
    one will simply dump core without comment. Multitudes will 
    rejoice. -- Tim Peters, 29 Apr 1998



-- 
Steven