Replace "DSL" with "idiom" and I totally agree with you. It's often possible to look at a code snippet and recognize what codebase it's from, even if it's doing

Replace "DSL" with "idiom" and I totally agree with you. It's often possible to look at a code snippet and recognize what codebase it's from, even if it's doing something pretty generic. There are explicit local APIs, implicit local APIs (often associated with local data structures or stores), and local habits such as looping over items in a particular way. Managing memory, scheduling work, logging, and so on all tend to follow local rules. Those rules together are the moral equivalent of a DSL. So you're right, for programming in the large it's very important how well the language supports creating good reusable APIs and data structures. I think that's why so many people make such a big deal about generics in Go, though personally I think it's a poor example and the complaints are tiresome. I think I'd focus more on whether the language has things like macros and lambdas/continuations that let non-API idioms be expressed consistently and conveniently, as though they're part of the language (even though I think creating a true DSL is usually a bad idea). Not sure Go meets this standard TBH.