The Go programming language community is currently engaged in a heated debate over a new proposal to simplify error handling using a '?' operator, highlighting a growing divide between seasoned developers and newcomers to the language.
Traditional vs. Modern Error Handling
The discussion reveals a significant split in the Go community regarding error handling approaches. Long-time Go developers have grown accustomed to and even appreciate the explicit if err != nil pattern, while developers coming from other languages often find it cumbersome and repetitive. As one community member notes:
If you're used to exceptions, and languages with some kind of '?' operator, typing
if err != nilall the time is probably excruciating. Once you've been using the language for awhile, you begin to dislike the elaborate system of rugs other languages have to sweep errors under.
Proposal Impact and Community Concerns
The proposed change would affect approximately 1.98% of all statements in the Go standard library, representing a significant transformation in how Go code is written and read. Community members have raised several concerns about the proposal, including the potential confusion for newcomers, the risk of missing error handling with an easily overlooked '?' symbol, and whether such a fundamental change is necessary given modern development tools.
Key Statistics from Proposal:
- 723,292 total statements analyzed in standard library
- 14,304 statements convertible to new syntax
- 1.98% of all statements would be changed
- 2,825 statements (0.39%) would use ? with no optional block
Modern Development Context
Interestingly, some developers point out that with the advent of AI-powered development tools and copilots, the burden of writing boilerplate code has significantly decreased. This technological advancement has led some to question whether syntactic changes to reduce boilerplate are still as crucial as they might have been a few years ago.
Technical Credibility
The proposal carries significant weight in the community, coming from Ian Lance Taylor, a key figure in Go's development who was instrumental in bringing generics to the language. This background has encouraged many developers to give serious consideration to the proposal despite their initial reservations.
The debate continues to evolve, with the community weighing the benefits of reduced boilerplate against Go's principles of simplicity and explicitness in error handling.
Reference: discussion: spec: reduce error handling boilerplate using ? #71460