Let's talk about why Golang doesn't need context

In the Go language, we often use goroutine to implement concurrent operations. However, in actual applications, we have to face various complex scenarios, such as when calling other services (such as database services), we need to control the timeout and cancel operations. etc., and data sharing between coroutines is also a thorny issue. In response to these problems, the Go language provides the context package, which provides functions such as sharing context data between coroutines, controlling timeouts, and canceling operations. However, in some cases, context can also bring some trouble and unnecessary overhead. , and sometimes we don’t need context, so why doesn’t Golang need context?

Using coroutines to handle concurrent operations is one of the very powerful features of the Go language. Compared with the way other languages ​​use threads, coroutines have the advantages of lightweight, low overhead, and strong controllability. , allowing us to handle more complex concurrency scenarios. The role of the context package is to provide us with a way to transfer context information between coroutines in order to achieve control between coroutines.

Although the context package can conveniently solve the above problems, in some development scenarios, using context may also bring some unnecessary overhead and trouble. For example, we sometimes need to use multiple goroutines to process some tasks concurrently, and these tasks are independent of each other and will not affect each other. At this time, if we create a context for each coroutine, the operation may seem cumbersome and redundant. Remain. In addition, in some small applications, using context may cause the code to become more bloated and less readable.

Therefore, the designers of the Go language did not force us to use context based on actual needs and implementation costs. In Golang, we can control timeout, cancellation and other operations between coroutines through some other methods, such as using the time.After() function to control timeouts, or using the cancel value to cancel coroutine operations when needed.

It should be noted that although Golang does not force us to use context, it is also necessary to use context in some scenarios. For example, when making HTTP requests, we need to control the request timeout and error handling. These operations require us to use context to set and control.

To sum up, although Golang does not force us to use context, context is still very important and necessary in scenarios where we need to control timeouts, cancel operations, and share context information between coroutines. Of course, for some simple application scenarios, we can choose other ways to control coroutines to avoid unnecessary overhead and redundancy caused by overuse of context.

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