I prefer for it to be just a warning so I can debug without trouble, the build system will just prevent me from completing the pull request with it (and any other warning).
A quick “find all references” will point out it’s not used and can be deleted if it accidentally gets checked in but ideally, you have systems in place to not let it get checked into the main branch in the first place.
Or a linter. Or code reviews. Or anything else. The nice thing is that if the compiler doesn’t demand something, it can be given to the engineer as an option. The compiler should have the option to do it. The option could even be defaulted on. Afaik there is no way in Golang to disable that error (this is the line that does it: https://github.com/golang/go/blob/04fb929a5b7991ed0945d05ab8015c1721958d82/src/go/types/stmt.go#L67-L69). like --no-pedantics or such. Golang’s compiler openly refuses to give engineers more choices in what they think is the best system to handle it.
If only there was some way the compiler could detect unused variable declarations, and may be emit some sort of “warning”, which would be sort of like an “error”, but wouldn’t cause the build to fail, and could be treated as an error in CI pipelines
Let’s not pretend people acknowledge warnings, though. It’s a popular meme that projects will have hundreds of warnings and that devs will ignore them all.
There’s a perfectly valid use case for opinionated languages that don’t let you get away with that. It’s also similar to how go has gofmt to enforce a consistent formatting.
Honestly, I’ve been using Go for years and this unused variable error rarely comes up. When it does, it’s trivial to resolve. But the error has saved me from bugs more often than it has wasted my time. Most commonly when you declare a new variable in a narrower scope when you intended to assign to the variable of the same name (since Go has separate declare vs assign operators).
As your future colleague wondering what the hell that variable is for, thanks Go.
I prefer for it to be just a warning so I can debug without trouble, the build system will just prevent me from completing the pull request with it (and any other warning).
A quick “find all references” will point out it’s not used and can be deleted if it accidentally gets checked in but ideally, you have systems in place to not let it get checked into the main branch in the first place.
Yeah that should be looked for in a CI line check, not a compilation requirement
Yeah any compiler should support environments or config files. Our CI would never work with without
--env “stage”You mean a system like the compiler
Or a linter. Or code reviews. Or anything else. The nice thing is that if the compiler doesn’t demand something, it can be given to the engineer as an option. The compiler should have the option to do it. The option could even be defaulted on. Afaik there is no way in Golang to disable that error (this is the line that does it: https://github.com/golang/go/blob/04fb929a5b7991ed0945d05ab8015c1721958d82/src/go/types/stmt.go#L67-L69). like --no-pedantics or such. Golang’s compiler openly refuses to give engineers more choices in what they think is the best system to handle it.
Who needs an option to leave unused variables around the code base? Lazybones?
You’ve literally never commented out a line or two but left the variable declaration while debugging?
If only there was some way the compiler could detect unused variable declarations, and may be emit some sort of “warning”, which would be sort of like an “error”, but wouldn’t cause the build to fail, and could be treated as an error in CI pipelines
Let’s not pretend people acknowledge warnings, though. It’s a popular meme that projects will have hundreds of warnings and that devs will ignore them all.
There’s a perfectly valid use case for opinionated languages that don’t let you get away with that. It’s also similar to how go has gofmt to enforce a consistent formatting.
Honestly, I’ve been using Go for years and this unused variable error rarely comes up. When it does, it’s trivial to resolve. But the error has saved me from bugs more often than it has wasted my time. Most commonly when you declare a new variable in a narrower scope when you intended to assign to the variable of the same name (since Go has separate declare vs assign operators).
Changing it will bring down the entire system.
We’ve spent ten million dollars and do not know why.
Isnt the syntax highlighting it as mever used?
So why would they wonder?