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Go is still not good

(blog.habets.se)
644 points ustad | 1 comments | 22 Aug 25 09:25 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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softwaredoug ◴[22 Aug 25 11:31 UTC] No.44983216[source]▶
I like Go, but my main annoyance is deciding when to use a pointer or not use a pointer as variable/receiver/argument. And if its an interface variable, it has a pointer to the concrete instance in the interface 'struct'. Some things are canonically passed as pointers like contexts.

It just feels sloppy and I'm worried I'm going to make a mistake.

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1. RadiozRadioz ◴[22 Aug 25 15:44 UTC] No.44985983[source]▶
This confused me too. It is tricky because sometimes it's more performant to copy the data rather than use a pointer, and there's not a clear boundary as to when that is the case. The advice I was given was "profile your code and make your decision data-driven". That didn't make me happy.

Now I always use pointers consistently for the readability.