This argument is often repeated but doesn't make any sense. The value of generics is quantifications over types. In particular univeral quantification. "Generi

This argument is often repeated but doesn't make any sense. The value of generics is quantifications over types. In particular univeral quantification. "Generic" slices don't give you that, because the values are "generic", but there are no non-static type constructors. Go slices are "generic" only in the same sense than arrays in C are generic, or (if we go to the degenerate case) that a variable is "generic" because you can declare it with any type. I'm sorry, what? Go has existential quantification, something which C lacks. Go is very unusual that it started with existential types. Languages based on System Fω have universal quantification as a native operation and implement existential types as higher rank universals. The fact that Go had existentials from the beggining is not some technical nitpick, it is what gives it type-level expressive power over languages like C. Ignoring this in arguments about generics is missing the point completely.