E2E: Erik Meijer and Robert Griesemer - Going Go

The Discussion

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  Very interesting ! Go Go Go

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  Thanks for the interesting talk!
  
  I have a question. Instead of using defer:
  
  f, _ := os.Open("somefile")
  defer f.Close()
  
  Why not just have special method, like C++'s destructor, which is fired automatically at the end of scope? You can still handle the plain memory in the GC, but the destructor will handle other resources. What is the principal difference between calling Close() in the destructor vs defer-ing Close()?
  
  Thanks,
  Zura

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  Zura: In Go, the file handle could have been passed a long a channel to somewhere else. Keeping the call of the "destructor" in a defer statement also increases clarity.
  
  There are many compromises between clarity, garbage collection, and general feature sets. Go is heavily biased towards clarity.

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  Note that SetFinalizer exists, which is essentially a destructor triggered by the Garbage Collector. http://golang.org/pkg/runtime/#SetFinalizer

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  Note that SetFinalizer is not guaranteed to run.

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  @mvrak:
  The finalizer is called by GC, i.e. it is nondeterministic, it might not be called until the end of program.
  The defer-ed function is called at the end of the function.