>There is a story about generics in Go. The story is, a variety of complex programs are being built and deployed in Golang without generics, which makes it an open question as to whether they're required at all.
The same argument could be used against adding closures to Java. After all "complex programs are being built and deployed without them". And yet, everyone thinks that it's a good idea that should have happened years before.
I think the argument is a variation of "I can do stuff in assembly just fine, why I'd need a higher level language?".
>Golang doesn't have to be all things to all people, nor does it have to fulfill every programming task any one developer has.
Well, generics are pretty basic to talk about having them as "being all things to all people". It's not like the majority of users testing or using Go regularly ask for all kinds of exotic features. The vast majority, judging from the mailing list, blog posts, articles etc, just have this major gripe.
The same argument could be used against adding closures to Java. After all "complex programs are being built and deployed without them". And yet, everyone thinks that it's a good idea that should have happened years before.
I think the argument is a variation of "I can do stuff in assembly just fine, why I'd need a higher level language?".
>Golang doesn't have to be all things to all people, nor does it have to fulfill every programming task any one developer has.
Well, generics are pretty basic to talk about having them as "being all things to all people". It's not like the majority of users testing or using Go regularly ask for all kinds of exotic features. The vast majority, judging from the mailing list, blog posts, articles etc, just have this major gripe.