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You're making the point about _when_ they implemented generics, and I don't care about when, really. I care about a stable language that can still move and cha

You're making the point about _when_ they implemented generics, and I don't care about when, really. I care about a stable language that can still move and change when necessary without breaking everything behind it, and Go delivers that. It's non-trivial to design and add a feature as core to a language as generics and make it a backwards compatible release, and you're glossing over that by saying they should've done that sooner. The matter of timing is one that the Go team has a lot of their own thoughts around, so I would defer to them on that, but as for the quality of their releases, I think they deserve more praise.

masklinn 5y ago
> You're making the point about _when_ they implemented generics I'm not, I'm pointing out that there was nothing actually exceptional or praiseworthy about it. > It's non-trivial to design and add a feature as core to a language as generics and make it a backwards compatible release So? > and you're glossing over that by saying they should've done that sooner. I'm glossing over that by saying that it's hardly novel, and that this is a self inflicted issue which dates back literally to the original language. This is a problem they were told about all along. They never had to take that risk, they decided to against advice.
- kgeist 5y ago
  >This is a problem they were told about all along. They never had to take that risk, they decided to against advice. They were always open to adding generics to the language, as can be seen in their FAQ from 2013 [0]: >Why does Go not have generic types? Generics may well be added at some point. We don't feel an urgency for them, although we understand some programmers do. Generics are convenient but they come at a cost in complexity in the type system and run-time. We haven't yet found a design that gives value proportionate to the complexity, although we continue to think about it. [0] http://web.archive.org/web/20130118182924/https://golang.org/doc/faq#Why_doesnt_Go_have_feature_X http://web.archive.org/web/20130118182924/https://golang.org...
  - masklinn 5y ago
    I fail to see how that contradicts my statement in any way. If anything it supports it: by “not feeling an urgency”, against repeated prompting and advice, the go team created this migration issue for themselves, and was long forewarned of it. And that faq entry is little more that a way to tell critics to shut up about it. Being added in 2013 means people had been telling them about the issue for more than 3 years.

masklinn 5y ago

> You're making the point about _when_ they implemented generics I'm not, I'm pointing out that there was nothing actually exceptional or praiseworthy about it. > It's non-trivial to design and add a feature as core to a language as generics and make it a backwards compatible release So? > and you're glossing over that by saying they should've done that sooner. I'm glossing over that by saying that it's hardly novel, and that this is a self inflicted issue which dates back literally to the original language. This is a problem they were told about all along. They never had to take that risk, they decided to against advice.

kgeist 5y ago
>This is a problem they were told about all along. They never had to take that risk, they decided to against advice. They were always open to adding generics to the language, as can be seen in their FAQ from 2013 [0]: >Why does Go not have generic types? Generics may well be added at some point. We don't feel an urgency for them, although we understand some programmers do. Generics are convenient but they come at a cost in complexity in the type system and run-time. We haven't yet found a design that gives value proportionate to the complexity, although we continue to think about it. [0] http://web.archive.org/web/20130118182924/https://golang.org/doc/faq#Why_doesnt_Go_have_feature_X http://web.archive.org/web/20130118182924/https://golang.org...
- masklinn 5y ago
  I fail to see how that contradicts my statement in any way. If anything it supports it: by “not feeling an urgency”, against repeated prompting and advice, the go team created this migration issue for themselves, and was long forewarned of it. And that faq entry is little more that a way to tell critics to shut up about it. Being added in 2013 means people had been telling them about the issue for more than 3 years.