How I turned a binary search tree into a generic data structure with go2go · Applied Go

Some time ago I wrote about how to create a balanced binary search tree. The search keys and the data payload were both plain strings. Now it is time to get rid of this limitation. go2go lets us do that while waiting for the official generics release.

Some time ago I wrote about how to create a balanced binary search tree. The search keys and the data payload were both plain strings. Now it is time to get rid of this limitation. go2go lets us do that while waiting for the official generics release.

Warning: This article is super boring! It turned out that converting a container type into a generic container type is quite straightforward with go2go and shows no surprises.

It is a good sign because adding generic data types and functions to a programming language is dead easy… to get wrong. Hence the Go team went to great lengths, and took all possible precautions, to design generics that don’t suck. And IMHO, the current proposal should appeal even to the ones who were skeptical about adding generics to Go at all.

With the current generics design, it would seem fairly easy to create new generic data structures and generic functions, but what about sifting through old code to make it generic? Will there be any footguns?

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