Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit
omoikane | on: //go:fix inline and the source-level inliner
I wonder why they chose to add these directives as comments as opposed to adding new syntax for them. It feels like a kludge.

https://wiki.c2.com/?HotComments

kjksf | parent | next
Go designers distinguish between Go language as defined by Go spec and implementation details.

//go:fix is something understood by a particular implementation of Go. Another implementation could implement Go without implementing support for //go:fix and it would be a fully compliant implementation of Go, the language.

If they made it part of the syntax, that would require other implementations to implement it.

loading story #47392489
loading story #47392427
Groxx | parent | next
Because these are instructions for users for making tool-assisted changes to their source code, not a behavior that exists at runtime (or even compile time). A new syntax wouldn't make sense for it.

For other things, like `//go:noinline`, this is fair criticism. `//go:fix inline` is quite different in every way.

kalterdev | parent | next
I suppose, to minimize its use. If annotations have the same syntactic weight as normal statements, such as “if” or “for” statements, there’s a temptation to use them liberally, which is clearly not a good fit for Go.

By making them comments, Go subtly signals that these are exceptional, making them less prominent and harder to abuse.

0x696C6961 | parent
The //go:xyz comments are an established pattern in the Go tooling.
Mond_ | root | parent
This is begging the question. Yes, but why did they do that over dedicated syntax?

(My personal theory is that early go had a somewhat misguided idea of simplicity, and preferred overloading existing concepts with special cases over introducing new keywords. Capitalization for visibility is another example of that.)

| root | parent | next
{"deleted":true,"id":47394622,"parent":47392422,"time":1773629021,"type":"comment"}
thwarted | root | parent
//go:xyz is dedicated syntax that is compatible with both the language spec and other toolchains that don't know about it.
Mond_ | root | parent | next
It's an overloaded comment. I am personally quite fine with it, I don't think it's bad. but it is an overloaded comment.
thwarted | root | parent
I'm no longer sure what you're saying. You asked why they didn't go with dedicated syntax, I listed two advantageous aspects of the chosen syntax. We know it's an overloaded comment: that's literally one of the advantages.
Mond_ | root | parent
Well, I've been unable to follow you as well, then. Obviously if they'd used a different type of syntax (e.g. using # for annotations), those would also be compatible with the language spec, and other implementations would still be just as capable of ignoring all unknown annotations.

(Though for the record, talking about alternative implementations when discussing Go is kind of a funny joke.)

overfeed | root | parent
Is gccgo a joke to you?
debugnik | root | parent
Maybe? It's stuck at 1.18 without generics and no one has replaced its maintainer, Ian Lance Taylor, who seems to have moved on after leaving Google.

But to be fair to alternative toolchains, TinyGo and TamaGo are also a thing.

| root | parent | next
{"deleted":true,"id":47395296,"parent":47392491,"time":1773636160,"type":"comment"}
debugnik | root | parent
Good luck compiling on a toolchain that doesn't know about //go:embed or /* */import "C" comments.