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0 pointscoldtea10y ago0 comments

That's why I said I'm paraphrasing him.

That said, he talked about questions of physics, not "truth".

Now, those new theories might or might not be truth.

But the fact that (in his phrasing) they only prevail not because of extra proof, convincing etc., but just because a generation that didn't like them died, doesn't make them seem particularly "truth" based.

Mostly "generational-fashion" based.

It could of course be that the new generation of physicists is also more capable to accept the truth (and Plank might believed that), but this doesn't derive directly from the statement.

The statement only goes as far to say that new generations of physicists are more capable to accept newer theories (the ones that grew with them, and they are more familiar with them than the oldsters are).

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fauigerzigerk10y ago· 1 in thread

>That's why I said I'm paraphrasing him.

I suppose you paraphrased him to draw an analogy. And you did it by replacing "scientific truth" by "language level feature".

>That said, he talked about questions of physics, not "truth"

Here's what he said:

A scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.

Similarily, proponents of generics like to portray the creators of Go as the old guard that is in denial of an indisputable scientific truth.

But whether or not the added expressivity of generics is worth the added complexity they introduce into a language is a matter for debate dependent on context, not a settled scientifc question.

coldteaOP10y ago

>Similarily, proponents of generics like to portray the creators of Go as the old guard that is in denial of an indisputable scientific truth.

Well, they are the old guard (both in age and in adopting 30+ years of PL research).

And it is an indisputable truth that Generics are both safer and/or faster than the workarounds (copypasta, interface{}).

>But whether or not the added expressivity of generics is worth the added complexity they introduce into a language is a matter for debate dependent on context, not a settled scientifc question.

I don't think we do/should consider generics complex anymore. Even Java programmers, the most tame of the bunch, got along with them just fine for a decade now.

Besides, Go has closures and channels, two things that seemed alien just 1-2 decades ago to enterprise programmers. Surely generics, an even older and more widespread concept is not that foreign...

Besides, Go already has generics -- it just doesn't allow the programmer to use them too.

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