But are you gonna return something for this method??? You said you’d return an integer, yet there is no return statement!
and it had better be an integer! it had better be an integer, motherfucker!!
Well yea… If you write “return <object of some other type>” that is actually wrong, as opposed to just not having gotten around to filling it in yet
This is why I always write my methods from bottom to top. This way I’ve always got a return statement and I use my variables before they are even declared.
I do actually use variables before I declare them most of the time. IDEs make it so easy to then generate the declaration with the correct type.
IDE is one thing, Go refuses to compile. Like calm down, I’m going to use it in a second. Just let me test the basics of my new method before I start using this variable.
Or every time you add or remove a printf it refuses to compile until you remove that unused import. Please just fuck off.
Yeah I think it’s trauma due to C/C++'s awful warning system, where you need a gazillion warnings for all the flaws in the language but because there are a gazillion of them and some are quite noisy and false positives prone, it’s extremely common to ignore them. Even worse, even the deadly no-brainer ones (e.g. not returning something from a function that says it will) tend to be off by default, which means it is common to release code that triggers some warnings.
Finally C/C++ doesn’t have a good packaging story so you’ll pretty much always see warnings from third party code in your compilations, leading you to ignore warnings even more.
Based on that, it’s very easy to see why the Go people said “no warnings!”. An unused variable should definitely be at least a warning so they have no choice but to make it an error.
I think Rust has proven that it was the wrong decision though. When you have proper packaging support (as Go does), it’s trivial to suppress warnings in third party code, and so people don’t ignore warnings. Also it’s a modern language so you don’t need to warn for the mistakes the language made (like case fall through, octal literals) because hopefully you didn’t make any (or at least as many).
VSCode with Go language support: removes unused variable on save “Fixed that compilation bug for ya, boss”
Like actually deletes them from the working copy? Or just removes them in the code sent to the compiler but they still appear in the editor?
Yeah IIRC it deletes them, which is as mad as you would expect. Maybe they’ve fixed that since I used it last which was some years ago.
Compiler/interpreter: Can’t find variable farfignewton.
Earlier:
Me: Declare variables near, far
IDE: Oh! You mean farfignewton right? I found that in some completely unrelated library you didn’t write. Allow me complete that for you while you’re not paying attention.
Yes, compared to the annoyances of “smart” IDEs, I do want something dumb.
One thing most text editors can do is print. I was shocked the other day when I couldn’t print a readme from vscode when someone asked for hard copy.
Visual Studio: PROPERTY DOESN’T EXIST ON TYPE!! NOTHING EXISTS ANYMORE!!! REALITY HAS COLLAPSED!
Me: What? I haven’t even touched that class, let me check.
Visual Studio: Oops, nevermind, héhé 🙃
I swear to god this didnt used to be a problem few years ago. However im having that bug constantly now…
Me: <starts a heredoc>
jetbrains: This heredoc goes on FOREVER!
Me: I’m going to close it…
jetbrains: <dies>
I start writing the implementation and get the “variable not defined” error and then let the ide add the declaration. It’s less keys to press and misspell.
