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Comment by divan | Hacker News Reader

> difficulty of writing if err != nil

Literally the simplest way to deal with errors (cognitively and character wise). Since AI autocomplete entered the scene, typing this repetitive (for a reason) pattern became not a problem at all (I'm not even talking about post Claude Code era)

> The only resort the consumer of this library has is to parse the string value of this error for useful information.

Well, no. See for wrap/unwrap functionality https://go.dev/blog/go1.13-errors

> In Go, errors are values. They just aren’t particularly useful values.

In his example author could easily use his `progError` type instead.

Gosh, why it's so tempting to write a post about bad language instead of just reading docs or article about idiomatic usage?

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> typing this repetitive (for a reason) pattern became not a problem at all

Code is read 10x more than it is written. The noise this pattern introduces inhibits reading and rapid comprehension.

Things are getting marginally better now that go has errors.Is and errors.As, and also now that go is starting to get some functional iterators. But go is one of the least quickly-understandable of the modern languages currently in use.

> The noise this pattern introduces

Here is the thing... it's NOT a 'noise'. Untill you see handling 'error path' as noise, you will be trapped in searching magic bullet language solution to hide it. We've all been there.

Handling errors doesn’t have to be noisy. Handling errors the way golang requires is.

When it takes five times as long to figure out how a function actually works (not only due to error handling, to be fair), the language has a problem.

Your last sentence makes sense only if you consider “happy path” to be what you call “understanding how function works”. A lot of programmers are annoyed that Go forces them to think about “error path” as equally important. Later many say that Go forces you to be the better programmer. But it takes time. In any case, saying “language has a problem” is a wrong frame for thinking about this design choice.

This is something gophers constantly repeat, but it is entirely a self-inflicted issue that other languages more modern than C don’t actually struggle with.

When in Rust, it is explicitly clear when and where errors can come up, and what types of errors I have to deal with. It is far less clear in golang, since there is no help from the type system when I’m using errors.Is and errors.As. Not being verbose doesn’t make error handling any less explicit.

Nobody is upset about having to pay attention to the unhappy path. This is entirely a straw man that gophers fall back to in order to feel like they’re somehow enlightened, shut down conversation, and to avoid having to consider what other people are saying. We are desperately hoping to help you realize that there are other, better ways that don’t come at the ridiculous readability costs inflicted by the anemic golang approach.

It really is okay to stop making excuses and accept that your preferred language has warts. I promise. Nobody will think less of you.

> other languages more modern than C

> When in Rust

A language newer than Go isn't just "more modern than C".

That's not a straw man, it's a valid reply to your first argument about "error handling code being an obstacle to understanding how function works". Why it makes you angry and makes you resort to ad hominem, I don't know, but that's clearly the end of the discussion.

No, it is a knee-jerk response that invariably assumes that a belief that golang’s specific approach is bad is equivalent to believing that errors are of secondary importance, and assumes that anyone who disagrees with the golang approach just doesn’t get how important it is to deal with errors.

You would rather dismiss other perspectives out of hand than actually reflect on how your chosen language might evolve.

In my perspective, this has been the entire historical progression of golang. Everyone vehemently denies that there’s a problem, eventually the language authors address it, and then everyone insists that it’s always been known that they needed to deal with the issue.

I don’t know why this seems to be so endemic to the golang community. Other languages’ adherents seem more than willing to accept the shortcomings of their preferred tools. But gophers continually insist that all the problems are actually strengths right up until it’s fixed and then they retcon their previous beliefs. It’s extremely off-putting.

The only knee-jerking here is this: "When it takes five times as long to figure out how a function actually works".

Don't be surprised by receiving low quality responses when you start off the discussion with ridiculous hyperboles and show poor understanding of the issue at hand.

> The noise this pattern introduces inhibits reading and rapid comprehension.

Nonsense. We don't read letters, nor even words, we see patterns. if err != nil {} is easy to skip over visually.

>> difficulty of writing if err != nil >Literally the simplest way to deal with errors (cognitively and character wise). Since AI autocomplete entered the scene, typing this repetitive (for a reason) pattern became not a problem at all (I'm not even talking about post Claude Code era)

I agree with you. I don't have problems with the `if err!=nil` syntax.

From my post: > It’s become something of a meme to bemoan the supposed difficulty of writing if err != nil. I actually won’t make that point because I think it is a very surface level point that has been talked about to death and *I don’t think the ‘verbosity’ of this code snippet is such an issue.*

I apologize if my language was ambiguous on whether or whether not I had a problem with that syntax.

>In his example author could easily use his `progError` type instead.

I agree, but it was my impression that type erasure was more idiomatic. I should have made it clear that I was criticizing that idiom, not the language.

>Well, no. See for wrap/unwrap functionality https://go.dev/blog/go1.13-errors

You are right. I should have done my research on that before writing that point. I still think that downcasting isn't the most elegant solution because it defeats the point of using the opaque return type but I agree that it is nowhere near as much of a problem as I thought it was.

It’s still an issue because the type system doesn’t actually help you out when you want to handle all the possible types of error.

The simplest thing is not to do anything but defer to caller to handle it, in languages like Python, Java, JavaScript. Often that is also the only realistic way to an error, especially for library code.

To be fair, the author says it's the "_supposed_ difficulty of writing err != nil" and says that the verbosity isn't an issue here. But he also earlier says that he "[hates] having to write pub all the time in Rust" to denote public visibilities. So typing seven extra characters in one place = tolerable, but four extra characters elsewhere = detestable

Its not really a matter of logic, I guess.

Writing `pub` is personally more annoying to me than writing `if err != nil`. I understand that most people don't like how capitalization determines visibility, but I think it actually makes sense when you think about it.

the problem with the err != nil spam is that manual unwinding destroys useful information: the stack

that and the fact you can accidently silently ignore it without it being a compiler error

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