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I find it amusing how angry people get about this, like really, vehemently angry. If this issue is so important to people, don't use Go, use C++, Java, D or Ru

I find it amusing how angry people get about this, like really, vehemently angry. If this issue is so important to people, don't use Go, use C++, Java, D or Rust. Don't waste your life arguing about something you'll never use, it's not a productive use of your time! Think about how much time you could save! Alternatively, propose a solution to the problem and try and gain some traction to get it implemented into the language, or fork Go and implement it yourself. There's evidently a hunger out there for generics in Go, but everyone keeps assuming the responsibility lies with the Go Core team who's priorities seem (right now) to be in the optimising GC/compiler area.

personZ 12y ago
This is exactly it. There are a lot of people who have argued passionately about this (the same crew of commentators appear with the same complaints in every single Go discussion), and now they are so deep in their advocacy that they feel their pride depends upon aggressively and vigorously defending it. It has gotten worse every time this has come up, and most of the comments are the logical conclusion. I mean seriously one of the comments calls it "ghettolang" without parody. Is this really Hacker News? And exactly as you said -- for those people so offended by this: Move on. Use something different. Go isn't for you. As someone who has integrated Go very effectively into my life, I'm rather glad the Go team isn't listening to every railing fanatic and their pet issues.
- coldtea 12y ago
  >one of the comments calls it "ghettolang" without parody. Is this really Hacker News? And then: >I'm rather glad the Go team isn't listening to every railing fanatic and their pet issues. Oh, the irony. Why people assume that only people NOT using Go are complaining, it's beyond me. Or why people assume that if you like features X of a product, and would like it to have feature Y, you shouldn't.
  - personZ 12y ago
    Nothing ironic about it. There are very vocal, very passionate people who pile the hate on Go in every single discussion regarding it. The list can usually be summarized as "ways that Go is not Haskell". Which is strange, because a post about Haskell tends to be about Haskell. A post about Go tends to be a lot of people telling everyone how Go is unlike, to its detriment, other languages. Great -- go use those languages. Why people assume that only people NOT using Go are complaining HN doesn't have a large community of commentators, and you get to know the common personalities. There are absolutely people building solutions in Go who might think "it would be nice to have generics", and indeed that's exactly why they've never been discounted or denied by the Go team, simply deferred. But these discussions are dominated not by those people, but instead people telling you why Go is not Rust is not Haskell is not C# is not... What's the point? We have a lot of languages and environments to choose from, and we do. Why are people seemingly threatened by Go? It's bizarre. Generics are nice and they're important, but there are a lot of nice and important attributes to a language, and they have bigger priorities. If generics were critical to my work, I simply wouldn't use Go (and indeed, for some subsections and components, I don't for that reason. Life goes on. Different tools serve different needs).
    - tome 12y ago
      > Why are people seemingly threatened by Go? I don't think anyone's threatened by Go. I think some people are disappointed that Go's designers chose not to add a lot of extra type-related features, including generics, for some extra effort on the part of the language designers but very little cost (and much benefit) to the language users. If this was an unused toy language there would be no problem, but the existence of lots of code written in any language will have a small cost on other developers for social reasons, even if they don't use that language.
      - personZ 12y ago
        I don't think anyone's threatened by Go. Yet your final sentence says exactly the opposite, indirectly. As if Go is some sort of scourge that these gallant guardians of language must fight. Further, if you assess the simplicity of adding generics, and it is at odds with the actual people creating the language and tools (among whom are some of the most respected names in this industry), that's a point when you should stop and reassess your own, outsider-looking-in perspective.
marktangotango 12y ago
I was thinking this exactly. As an external observer (I don't use go, don't intend to. I do look to it as an interesting example language though) all the vitriol is very puzzling. And you're right, the Go core team does not seem interested in adding generics anytime soon. Personally, and this is my opinion, I find myself wondering if old school hackers like Thompson, Pike, and Fitzpatrick (and others) find themselves not needing generics, or that slice/maps are enough, maybe I should ponder that for a while. Ie do they know something I don't? Edit; or maybe the type of software they're creating with go is different than I as a generics user, am creating?
- coldtea 12y ago
  >or maybe the type of software they're creating with go is different than I as a generics user, am creating? Or maybe their work is mostly creating Go, not using it, so they wouldn't care?
  - Dewie 12y ago
    At least Rob Pike seems to be using it. https://github.com/robpike/ivy https://github.com/robpike/ivy
  - weberc2 12y ago
    It seems like the people who actually use it love it. The folks who don't are the ones raging that Go doesn't have generics, after all.
itg 12y ago
So should people stop talking about the pros/cons of programming languages at all? Because this can also go the other way. Another person can say: "If you enjoy programming in Go, then use it but keep quiet and stop promoting it and talking about how much you like it." I haven't used Go at all yet, but I'm interested in hearing more about it the good and bad parts, along with other languages. Telling others to not complain at all doesn't do any favors.
- tormeh 12y ago
  I agree, but I think there's something to be said for not complaining about lack of generics in Go. We kinda got it the first 100 times it was said.
- personZ 12y ago
  then use it but keep quiet and stop promoting it Remarkably there has been close to zero promotion of Go on Hacker News. Occasionally various incremental update things appear on the front page, just as there are updates on C# 5, the next version of Java, etc, but there have been shockingly few "Why you should use Go" type posts. People just use it. They don't advocate it. But when it comes up, inevitably it becomes an advocacy starting point for alternative languages. Somehow every single Go discussion, even about the most banal thing, ends up being about Rust, Haskell, F#, and so on.
lmm 12y ago
Koolaid point. Go is a much, much worse language than e.g. D, Rust, OCaml, but somehow it gets all this attention. I appreciate it's not productive, but you can see why this naturally makes people angry.
codygman 12y ago
Perhaps the reason for anger is because of Go ignoring years of research and innovation. I would imagine people who were early adopters of power tools felt the same way. Imagine if you were used to using power tools, but all the jobs available forced you to use hammers, screwdrivers, etc. Wouldn't this make you a little angry or at the very least disappointed?

personZ 12y ago

This is exactly it. There are a lot of people who have argued passionately about this (the same crew of commentators appear with the same complaints in every single Go discussion), and now they are so deep in their advocacy that they feel their pride depends upon aggressively and vigorously defending it. It has gotten worse every time this has come up, and most of the comments are the logical conclusion. I mean seriously one of the comments calls it "ghettolang" without parody. Is this really Hacker News? And exactly as you said -- for those people so offended by this: Move on. Use something different. Go isn't for you. As someone who has integrated Go very effectively into my life, I'm rather glad the Go team isn't listening to every railing fanatic and their pet issues.

coldtea 12y ago
>one of the comments calls it "ghettolang" without parody. Is this really Hacker News? And then: >I'm rather glad the Go team isn't listening to every railing fanatic and their pet issues. Oh, the irony. Why people assume that only people NOT using Go are complaining, it's beyond me. Or why people assume that if you like features X of a product, and would like it to have feature Y, you shouldn't.
- personZ 12y ago
  Nothing ironic about it. There are very vocal, very passionate people who pile the hate on Go in every single discussion regarding it. The list can usually be summarized as "ways that Go is not Haskell". Which is strange, because a post about Haskell tends to be about Haskell. A post about Go tends to be a lot of people telling everyone how Go is unlike, to its detriment, other languages. Great -- go use those languages. Why people assume that only people NOT using Go are complaining HN doesn't have a large community of commentators, and you get to know the common personalities. There are absolutely people building solutions in Go who might think "it would be nice to have generics", and indeed that's exactly why they've never been discounted or denied by the Go team, simply deferred. But these discussions are dominated not by those people, but instead people telling you why Go is not Rust is not Haskell is not C# is not... What's the point? We have a lot of languages and environments to choose from, and we do. Why are people seemingly threatened by Go? It's bizarre. Generics are nice and they're important, but there are a lot of nice and important attributes to a language, and they have bigger priorities. If generics were critical to my work, I simply wouldn't use Go (and indeed, for some subsections and components, I don't for that reason. Life goes on. Different tools serve different needs).
  - tome 12y ago
    > Why are people seemingly threatened by Go? I don't think anyone's threatened by Go. I think some people are disappointed that Go's designers chose not to add a lot of extra type-related features, including generics, for some extra effort on the part of the language designers but very little cost (and much benefit) to the language users. If this was an unused toy language there would be no problem, but the existence of lots of code written in any language will have a small cost on other developers for social reasons, even if they don't use that language.
    - personZ 12y ago
      I don't think anyone's threatened by Go. Yet your final sentence says exactly the opposite, indirectly. As if Go is some sort of scourge that these gallant guardians of language must fight. Further, if you assess the simplicity of adding generics, and it is at odds with the actual people creating the language and tools (among whom are some of the most respected names in this industry), that's a point when you should stop and reassess your own, outsider-looking-in perspective.

marktangotango 12y ago

I was thinking this exactly. As an external observer (I don't use go, don't intend to. I do look to it as an interesting example language though) all the vitriol is very puzzling. And you're right, the Go core team does not seem interested in adding generics anytime soon. Personally, and this is my opinion, I find myself wondering if old school hackers like Thompson, Pike, and Fitzpatrick (and others) find themselves not needing generics, or that slice/maps are enough, maybe I should ponder that for a while. Ie do they know something I don't? Edit; or maybe the type of software they're creating with go is different than I as a generics user, am creating?

coldtea 12y ago
>or maybe the type of software they're creating with go is different than I as a generics user, am creating? Or maybe their work is mostly creating Go, not using it, so they wouldn't care?
- Dewie 12y ago
  At least Rob Pike seems to be using it. https://github.com/robpike/ivy https://github.com/robpike/ivy
- weberc2 12y ago
  It seems like the people who actually use it love it. The folks who don't are the ones raging that Go doesn't have generics, after all.

itg 12y ago

So should people stop talking about the pros/cons of programming languages at all? Because this can also go the other way. Another person can say: "If you enjoy programming in Go, then use it but keep quiet and stop promoting it and talking about how much you like it." I haven't used Go at all yet, but I'm interested in hearing more about it the good and bad parts, along with other languages. Telling others to not complain at all doesn't do any favors.

tormeh 12y ago
I agree, but I think there's something to be said for not complaining about lack of generics in Go. We kinda got it the first 100 times it was said.
personZ 12y ago
then use it but keep quiet and stop promoting it Remarkably there has been close to zero promotion of Go on Hacker News. Occasionally various incremental update things appear on the front page, just as there are updates on C# 5, the next version of Java, etc, but there have been shockingly few "Why you should use Go" type posts. People just use it. They don't advocate it. But when it comes up, inevitably it becomes an advocacy starting point for alternative languages. Somehow every single Go discussion, even about the most banal thing, ends up being about Rust, Haskell, F#, and so on.

lmm 12y ago

Koolaid point. Go is a much, much worse language than e.g. D, Rust, OCaml, but somehow it gets all this attention. I appreciate it's not productive, but you can see why this naturally makes people angry.

codygman 12y ago

Perhaps the reason for anger is because of Go ignoring years of research and innovation. I would imagine people who were early adopters of power tools felt the same way. Imagine if you were used to using power tools, but all the jobs available forced you to use hammers, screwdrivers, etc. Wouldn't this make you a little angry or at the very least disappointed?