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posted by martyb on Wednesday July 17 2019, @05:37PM   Printer-friendly
from the No!-Try-not.-Do,-or-do-not.-There-is-no-try.-YODA dept.

The Go language will not be adding a "try" keyword in the next major version, despite this being a major part of what was proposed for version 1.14.

Go, an open source language developed by Google, features static typing and native code compilation. It is around the 15th most popular language according to the Redmonk rankings.

Error handling in Go is currently based on using if statements to compare a returned error value to nil. If it is nil, no error occurred. This requires developers to write a lot of if statements.

"In general Go programs have too much code-checking errors and not enough code handling them," wrote Google principal engineer Russ Cox in an overview of the error-handling problem in Go.

A try statement was proposed to help reduce the coding burden. Upon further reflection:

That proposal has now been abandoned. Robert Griesemer, one of the original designers of Go, announced the decision in a post yesterday.

[...] “Making an exit point of a function that isn't a return, and is meant to be commonplace, may lead to much less readable code,” said one user.

The outcome is a good one insofar as the Go community has proved able to make and withdraw a major proposal without rancour. And as for error handling, no doubt the team will, um, try again.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 17 2019, @08:49PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 17 2019, @08:49PM (#868208)

    try {
        go->add('try') ;
    } catch(error) {
        nelson->ha('ha') ;
    }