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   Tim Bray (timbray@cosocial.ca)'s status on Wednesday, 13-Dec-2023 12:59:14 JST Tim Bray

   I would really REALLY like to have #ifdef in this Go code I’m working on - there’s this fairly heavyweight debugging stuff that I regularly switch in to chase a particular class of problems, but don’t want active in production code. #ifdef would have exactly the right semantics. Yeah, I know about tags.

   • Embed this notice
     Tim Bray (timbray@cosocial.ca)'s status on Wednesday, 13-Dec-2023 12:59:08 JST Tim Bray

     in reply to

     • Rob Pike
     • whenning

     @robpike @whenning Tl;dr: I build state machines and debugging them is hard, so I have code that attaches labels to the states, insanely helpful in figuring out where I goofed. In production there can be huge numbers of states, don't want to incur the memory cost. Am seriously considering attaching a structured comment to this code and having a homegrown preprocessor to switch it in/out.

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     Rob Pike (robpike@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 13-Dec-2023 12:59:08 JST Rob Pike

     in reply to

     • whenning

     @timbray @whenning I was going to suggest you use m4, but it sounds like you already have a plan.

     I understand the value of #ifdefs but lexically directed conditional compilation causes just far too much trouble. The potential for abuse is too high. It's simply not a good idea to have them generally available. Build a custom one for your problem and we'll all be happier.

     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.
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     Rob Pike (robpike@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 13-Dec-2023 12:59:10 JST Rob Pike

     in reply to

     • whenning

     @whenning @timbray Not for #ifdefs they won't.

   • Embed this notice
     whenning (whenning@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 13-Dec-2023 12:59:13 JST whenning

     in reply to

     @timbray maybe 10 years from now the Go team will have a change of heart after saying "YAGNI" to everyone who complains the way they did with generics.

   • Embed this notice
     whenning (whenning@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 13-Dec-2023 12:59:50 JST whenning

     in reply to

     • Rob Pike

     @robpike @timbray As I see it, your choice of words in saying things like "too much trouble" and "potential for abuse" and the assumptions implicit in those statements are what this and the decision to have support for any feature in a language boils down to.

   • Embed this notice
     Rob Pike (robpike@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 13-Dec-2023 12:59:50 JST Rob Pike

     in reply to

     • whenning

     @whenning @timbray That and decades of experience debugging important things that break in the real world.

     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.