He chose to go deep instead of broad. That was an editorial tradeoff to keep the length this side of an encyclopedia, and I don't think it's fair to criticize h

He chose to go deep instead of broad. That was an editorial tradeoff to keep the length this side of an encyclopedia, and I don't think it's fair to criticize him for it unless you're also going to argue that the generalization he asked us to take on faith doesn't hold -- in other words, that the example he gave in which a simplifying API decision backfired is atypical. I haven't used much Go, but the bit that I've played with gave me the distinct impression that "opinionated simplification" wasn't just common, it was the defining quality of the entire language, which would strongly suggest that OP's complaint would easily generalize to a hundred other APIs. Is that not the case?