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by mpartel 3750 days ago
I agree that systems and libraries you don't deal with every day should strive for simplicity and learnability, but I think simplicity is a much lesser virtue in programming languages.

A programming language is something you use every day, so you'll inevitably invest time in learning it properly. A language you can learn completely in a few days is unlikely to give you as much power, convenience and maintainability as a more complex language. Choosing Go might get you and your team started faster, but wastes a lot of potential over time.

(Of course complexity on its own is not a good thing, some complex features may be prone to abuse, orthogonality is still important etc., but Go is way too conservative to be competitive long-term I think.)

1 comments

To be simple is wrong, what is needed is to be minimal and to the point. Most of the time, the minimal tool is simple enough, but sometimes complexity is a necessary evil.

Driving a car is more complicated than running. Why do we invent cars in the first place?