The Go programming language documentation makes a big deal about how it “reads from left to right.” Like, if you were describing the program in English, the elements of the Go program go in the same order as they would in English.
I say this as someone who likes Go as a language and writes more of it than any other language: I honestly don’t entirely follow. One example they give is how you specify a type that’s a “slice” (think “list” or “array” or whatever from other languages) of some other type. For instance a “slice of strings” would be written []string. The [] on the left means it’s a slice type. And string on the right specifies what it’s a slice of.
But does it really make less sense to say “a string slice”?
In Go, the type always comes after the variable name. A declaration might look like:
var a string
Similarly in function declarations:
funcbob(a string, b int, c float64) []string { ... }
Anyway, I guess all that to say I don’t mind the Go style, but I don’t fully understand the point of it being the way it is, and wouldn’t mind if it was the other way around either.
Go’s syntax is vastly superior once you have more complicated signatures, then the left-to-right truly matters. For example a variable that contains a pointer to a function that takes a function and an int and returns another function (like a decorator).
In C the order becomes very hard to understand and you really have to read the thing several times to understand the type of fp:
int (*(*fp)(int (*)(int, int), int))(int, int)
In Go, you can just read from left to right and you can easily understand what f’s type is:
The Go programming language documentation makes a big deal about how it “reads from left to right.” Like, if you were describing the program in English, the elements of the Go program go in the same order as they would in English.
I say this as someone who likes Go as a language and writes more of it than any other language: I honestly don’t entirely follow. One example they give is how you specify a type that’s a “slice” (think “list” or “array” or whatever from other languages) of some other type. For instance a “slice of strings” would be written
[]string. The[]on the left means it’s a slice type. Andstringon the right specifies what it’s a slice of.But does it really make less sense to say “a string slice”?
In Go, the type always comes after the variable name. A declaration might look like:
var a stringSimilarly in function declarations:
func bob(a string, b int, c float64) []string { ... }Anyway, I guess all that to say I don’t mind the Go style, but I don’t fully understand the point of it being the way it is, and wouldn’t mind if it was the other way around either.
Go’s syntax is vastly superior once you have more complicated signatures, then the left-to-right truly matters. For example a variable that contains a pointer to a function that takes a function and an int and returns another function (like a decorator).
In C the order becomes very hard to understand and you really have to read the thing several times to understand the type of fp:
int (*(*fp)(int (*)(int, int), int))(int, int)In Go, you can just read from left to right and you can easily understand what f’s type is:
f func(func(int,int) int, int) func(int, int) intIt’s just much more readable.
See: https://go.dev/blog/declaration-syntax