It is a hack. The article lists a whole series of things that are standard in other languages that you can't do in go. Here are some examples: Find smalles

It is a hack. The article lists a whole series of things that are standard in other languages that you can't do in go. Here are some examples: Find smallest/largest element in slice Find average/standard deviation of slice Compute union/intersection of maps Find shortest path in node/edge graph Apply transformation function to slice/map, returning new slice/map And here are data structures that other languages have but go does not: Sets Self-balancing trees, with efficient insertion and traversal in sorted order Multimaps, with multiple instances of a key Concurrent hash maps, supporting parallel insertions and lookups with no single lock If it were not a hack, then go would not have these limitations.