Problems with Go channels (2016)

My rule of thumb is that the goroutine that writes to a channel is responsible for closing it. In this case, a deferred call to close the channel in HandlePlayer is sufficient.

Still, this example has other issues (naked range over a channel?!) potentially contributing to the author’s confusion.

However, this post was also written almost a decade ago, so perhaps it’s a result of being new to the language? If I cared to look, I’d probably be able to find the corresponding HN thread from that year full of arguments about this, hah.

> In this case, a deferred call to close the channel in HandlePlayer is sufficient

It is not clear from the example, but I presume there would multiple players, i.e there will calls of the form:

  g.HandlePlayer(p1)
  g.HandlePlayer(p2)
  ..

in such a case one player closing the channel would affect rest of the producers too.

> My rule of thumb is that the goroutine that writes to a channel is responsible for closing it. In this case, a deferred call to close the channel in HandlePlayer is sufficient.

This isn't your rule of thumb, it's the only practical way to do it. The problems arise when you have multiple goroutines writing to a channel, which is the case here.

> Still, this example has other issues (naked range over a channel?!) potentially contributing to the author’s confusion.

You sound way more confused than the author. I think you've misunderstood what the (admittedly very abstract) example is supposed to be doing.