I want to propose my own counter-proposal to the discussion that’s ongoing with Go and error handling.

Here it is: https://docs.mills.io/ix4qDHMnQUSPxZ5tXz12Vg?view

It’s very rough and needs much more work, but essentially I want to propose the following change to the language’s grammar:

f := os.Open("foo.txt") or (e error) {
    log.Fatal("error opening file; %s", e)
}

hmm this would convert down to:

var f os.File
if f, e = os.Open("foo.txt"); e != nil {
    log.Fatal("error opening file; %s", e)
}

im not sure if its much better.

@xuu@txt.sour.is I’m not necessarily saying it is to be bluntly honest. But it’s far better than this ? garbage. I don’t want to be rude, but honestly wtf is wrong with people and making languages harder to read?! 🤦‍♂️

@xuu@txt.sour.is And you’re right, it only really saves a single line. I think I’ve even commented on a similar discussion a few years ago as well where I showed concretely the abrustdity of the community wanting to change this. If I recall, the whole pattern of:

if err != nil {
    ...
}

basically accounts for <1-3% of your codebase in the first place.

The entire thing (fuss) is really just pathetic IMO.

If people just wrote error free code to begin with, there would be no need for error handling! :-P

No, honestly, I don’t think that there is anything wrong with the current approach. I don’t see any wins of any of the proposals I’ve come across.