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Comment by pjmlp | Hacker News Reader

    a := Sum (b, c)

How can you be sure that Sum actually does a sum without looking at its implementation?

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I think you are missing the point. Of course you can't assume what a function will do with certainty.

From CS point of view + is just a function name just like any other.

A concept used in lambda calculus, introduced in computing since Lisp exists.

Also part of abstract mathematics field, where operator symbols get defined for the proofs.

> From CS point of view + is just a function name just like any other.

From a Go point of view, it isn't.

Just because Go eschews decades of CS knowledge, in the name of the "easy to hire programmers" for Google[1], it doesn't make it less true.

[1] - According to the language designers own words

What you wrote isn't a universal truth. In Go, + is not a function like any other. There's no argument to this.

What is the difference, apart from the notation?

The point is in most languages operator overloading is no more complex than a method call.

It's not exactly magic.

Overloading + could be magic if you want it to be. In go, + is exactly what you think it is. In languages with operator overloading, I literally could make + do whatever I wanted to.

Just like you can make a function do something totally unrelated to how it is called, do what it is actually in the name, wipe out the hard drive, launch missiles, whatever.

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