Wow, I'm not sure how to begin responding to that.
Go has taken a lot of suggestions from the open source community. Check the Go 1 mailing list discussions for examples. But panic existed before the opensource release and is not a substitute for exceptions, and nobody has actually proposed a viable generics implementation. The unused variable/package thing is a fundamental to the project's goals of working well at scale, and tools like goimports alleviate the pain (sometimes the answer is tools, not language changes).
Overall I'm pretty dismayed by your characterisation of Go as an open source project. We have a lot of great contributors from outside Google and your ignorant comments do them a great disservice.
I realize I'm in the Lion's Den. I feel that if you stepped outside the Google employee and Hacker News bubble you would see Go stubbornly refusing to have modern features, as I do.
I've been programming for 30 years and have written code that is in every Linux distro, and yes I did read the Go mailing list occasionally in the early days. But if it makes you feel better to call my opinions ignorant then I hope that's working out for you.
I agree with you. There is a lot to like in Go, but even I can see (and I've only been programming for ~10 years) that it ignored a lot of good stuff from other languages.
They keep saying they would add generics if they feel they could "do it right" but I'm starting to not believe that. I like that the language tooling is extremely disciplined and enforces even small things, like style, but this rankles a bit considering other parts of the language design seem a bit inconsistent or haphazard. Just IMO, of course.
> I've been programming for 30 years and have written code that is in every Linux distro
A very strange argument from authority considering Ken Thompson is one of Go's designers...
Considering the fact that 700 people attended the inaugural Go conference, and the variety of speakers (http://gophercon.com/schedule/), I think it's safe to say that Go has gained traction far beyond the Google employee and HN "bubbles".
The argument of authority of Go designers is actually my point. By designing the language in public (even before having source available) they now don't want to admit their errors, and neither do their supporters, because they are authorities, supposedly. I'm thinking of Pike in particular.
By keeping these discussions private, the Apple team did not need to protect their egos or their authority. We do not know who is responsible for which decisions at which points in the design, and they don't feel the need to defend their choices in public.
The Go team has admitted several errors publicly (e.g. var binding for range loops, some standard library design) on multiple occasions. Those errors won't be changed because we consider preserving backward compatibility more important. You could say that holding on to backward compatibility is "defensiveness and stubbornness", but it's really just making a different decision to what you may have done in the same situation.
In fact, your premise is almost entirely incorrect. Probably 95% of Go's language design happened before it was open sourced, so it's in exactly the same situation as Swift. The Go language hasn't changed a lot since November 2009.
I wasn't calling your opinions ignorant. I made several factual corrections about your post. You also made further incorrect statements about the development timeline of go (dsymonds corrected you there). No offense was intended, but in general I'm of the opinion that you should get your facts straight when criticising something publicly.
Also I've gotta laugh at "lions den". I've been reading HNers (like yourself) broadly condemn Go for nearly five years.
And are you going to laugh all the way over to r/programming? There is some criticism on HN. Where there are no holds barred it's really brutal. I don't blame you as a Go developer for avoiding those forums.
> incorrect statements about the development timeline of go (dsymonds corrected you there).
Go authors retconned their decision making process in talks, lists, and on the web, which in terms of feeling defensive about it now is the same thing.
You said the Go team "[designed] the language in public". I pointed out that there's only a small amount of difference between the first public unveiling of Go and its current state, which you can verify for yourself.
You said the Go team "now don't want to admit their errors". I pointed out that we've admitted lots of errors, publicly, which you can verify for yourself.
Your criticisms seem scattershot and just don't make sense.
I stopped regularly visiting /r/programming before I started working on Go. The standard of discourse is too low; too many people eager to dickwave by sharing their negative opinions. HN can be bad but at least I can have a vaguely sane conversation here from time to time.
Go has taken a lot of suggestions from the open source community. Check the Go 1 mailing list discussions for examples. But panic existed before the opensource release and is not a substitute for exceptions, and nobody has actually proposed a viable generics implementation. The unused variable/package thing is a fundamental to the project's goals of working well at scale, and tools like goimports alleviate the pain (sometimes the answer is tools, not language changes).
Overall I'm pretty dismayed by your characterisation of Go as an open source project. We have a lot of great contributors from outside Google and your ignorant comments do them a great disservice.