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Calling it "gaslighting" is exactly what a hater would do. It's not very constructive. Generics were a pain point, but people have been crapping on Go on this

Calling it "gaslighting" is exactly what a hater would do. It's not very constructive. Generics were a pain point, but people have been crapping on Go on this forum while people out there are using it to build stuff. It's not a perfect language, but if you read any HN thread about it it's like it's impossible for people to go past the lack of generics or the existence of nil.

sanderjd 5y ago
It is a good use of the word "gaslighting", which I think can be defined as "an effort to convince someone that they do not know a thing that they do know". In this case, a lot of people know from lots of experience that writing type safe generic code is extremely useful, but the go community spent a long time arguing that people could not have had that experience because writing generic code isn't actually useful. This isn't really my impression of what the go team was saying, which I interpreted as more like "parametric polymorphism is useful but we aren't sure it is a good fit with the simple language design we are seeking to maintain". That's totally reasonable, everything is trade offs, but that's not the prevailing pushback you would get from the go community, you'd instead hear a message more like "if you'd rather write generic code instead of copy pasting constantly, you're a bad programmer who doesn't get it", which is not helpful and yes, I think gaslighting is a reasonable description. The existence of nil is also a design flaw. But you're right that no language is perfect and neither of these flaws keeps people from building tons of useful stuff with the language. I think there is definitely gaslighting in the other direction too, which is what you're highlighting: lots of people know from experience that go is a super useful language, but then people come of as saying "your experience does not exist, it is not a useful language because of these big design flaws".
- skybrian 5y ago
  Correct me if I’m wrong, but it sounds like you’re not really claiming people say “your experience does not exist” or “you’re a bad programmer who doesn’t get it.” It sounds like this is a bit of exaggeration for effect? I suspect you’re talking about something I’ve seen, which is people will say that your experience in other languages isn’t directly applicable to writing code in Go because it’s a different language and ecosystem. This seems like something newcomers need to hear sometimes, and it’s also somewhat irritating if in your case it doesn’t seem like that kind of issue. When generic advice for beginners gets misdirected then it can seem insulting, but I usually just try to remember that they don’t know me and beginner mistakes are worth checking for. I can choose not to be insulted. Getting people to actually hear what you’re saying when they’re pattern-matching on common questions can be difficult. I think we should still assume good faith, though, and “gaslighting” implies malice.
  - sanderjd 5y ago
    Those are summaries of responses I've gotten when discussing this a long time ago (before the language team decided to figure out how to incorporate generics). I'm not sure the exact actual wording, but that's very much how it came off to me, that there's no way to be both smart and experienced and simultaneously convinced that generics are an extremely useful language feature. These debates don't get so heated now, because even the go designers themselves conceded the point long ago. Your more nuanced version of the argument is also wrong though. Experience from other languages is always applicable. Even for beginners, it is obvious and correct to ask "wouldn't we save a lot of repetition if we could write a generic version of this function instead of tediously rewriting the same thing for a bunch of types?". The correct and very reasonable response is "yes, but the designers of this language chose not to support that functionality in an effort to maintain simplicity". The right answer is not "no, this language is unique such that that technique is not applicable to it". That's gaslighting, and much worse when directed toward beginners who will just conclude that they must be wrong, when they aren't. I agree with your last paragraph in general, but in this case that's not what was going on. Saying that the language would not actually benefit from polymorphism was not true, it was just a rationalization for leaving out a useful feature. It's the difference between "yeah that would be useful but we don't think the complexity it brings is worth it" vs. "that is not useful in this language for reasons you aren't wise enough to understand".
pjmlp 5y ago
I started coding in 1986, naturally I used plenty of languages without generics to build stuff, that doesn't mean it still makes sense in the 21st century to design strongly typed programming languages without generics.
djur 5y ago
Some people crapping on Go in this forum are also people who have been using it to build stuff, though. It's inaccurate to assume these are distinct groups.

sanderjd 5y ago

It is a good use of the word "gaslighting", which I think can be defined as "an effort to convince someone that they do not know a thing that they do know". In this case, a lot of people know from lots of experience that writing type safe generic code is extremely useful, but the go community spent a long time arguing that people could not have had that experience because writing generic code isn't actually useful. This isn't really my impression of what the go team was saying, which I interpreted as more like "parametric polymorphism is useful but we aren't sure it is a good fit with the simple language design we are seeking to maintain". That's totally reasonable, everything is trade offs, but that's not the prevailing pushback you would get from the go community, you'd instead hear a message more like "if you'd rather write generic code instead of copy pasting constantly, you're a bad programmer who doesn't get it", which is not helpful and yes, I think gaslighting is a reasonable description. The existence of nil is also a design flaw. But you're right that no language is perfect and neither of these flaws keeps people from building tons of useful stuff with the language. I think there is definitely gaslighting in the other direction too, which is what you're highlighting: lots of people know from experience that go is a super useful language, but then people come of as saying "your experience does not exist, it is not a useful language because of these big design flaws".

skybrian 5y ago
Correct me if I’m wrong, but it sounds like you’re not really claiming people say “your experience does not exist” or “you’re a bad programmer who doesn’t get it.” It sounds like this is a bit of exaggeration for effect? I suspect you’re talking about something I’ve seen, which is people will say that your experience in other languages isn’t directly applicable to writing code in Go because it’s a different language and ecosystem. This seems like something newcomers need to hear sometimes, and it’s also somewhat irritating if in your case it doesn’t seem like that kind of issue. When generic advice for beginners gets misdirected then it can seem insulting, but I usually just try to remember that they don’t know me and beginner mistakes are worth checking for. I can choose not to be insulted. Getting people to actually hear what you’re saying when they’re pattern-matching on common questions can be difficult. I think we should still assume good faith, though, and “gaslighting” implies malice.
- sanderjd 5y ago
  Those are summaries of responses I've gotten when discussing this a long time ago (before the language team decided to figure out how to incorporate generics). I'm not sure the exact actual wording, but that's very much how it came off to me, that there's no way to be both smart and experienced and simultaneously convinced that generics are an extremely useful language feature. These debates don't get so heated now, because even the go designers themselves conceded the point long ago. Your more nuanced version of the argument is also wrong though. Experience from other languages is always applicable. Even for beginners, it is obvious and correct to ask "wouldn't we save a lot of repetition if we could write a generic version of this function instead of tediously rewriting the same thing for a bunch of types?". The correct and very reasonable response is "yes, but the designers of this language chose not to support that functionality in an effort to maintain simplicity". The right answer is not "no, this language is unique such that that technique is not applicable to it". That's gaslighting, and much worse when directed toward beginners who will just conclude that they must be wrong, when they aren't. I agree with your last paragraph in general, but in this case that's not what was going on. Saying that the language would not actually benefit from polymorphism was not true, it was just a rationalization for leaving out a useful feature. It's the difference between "yeah that would be useful but we don't think the complexity it brings is worth it" vs. "that is not useful in this language for reasons you aren't wise enough to understand".

pjmlp 5y ago

I started coding in 1986, naturally I used plenty of languages without generics to build stuff, that doesn't mean it still makes sense in the 21st century to design strongly typed programming languages without generics.

djur 5y ago

Some people crapping on Go in this forum are also people who have been using it to build stuff, though. It's inaccurate to assume these are distinct groups.