[stcredzero]

One observation from watching Go and Rust gain popularity is that having an online code evaluation tool like https://play.rust-lang.org/ or https://play.golang.org/ can do wonders for adoption.

One of the things Go does right is the download-hello-world-compile-run experience. Especially now, since they now default GOPATH. One of the things that Go does wrong for popularity is the opinionated directory structure based environment mechanism. It has some advantages for large programming projects, but the way it runs counter to many programmer's expectations is seen by many as a wat!?

If Go had some way of mitigating that and the lack of generics, then the Hello World experience would be better for more people. (For admittedly shallow reasons, IMHO. I think that Go is pretty good the way it is. I haven't yet felt a need for generics yet in my MMO project.)

[saghm]

> If Go had some way of mitigating that and the lack of generics, then the Hello World experience would be better for more people.

Does the lack of generics really impact the experience of "Hello World"? I don't think I've ever seen generics used in a "Hello World" example even in languages that have them.

[eptcyka]

Whenever I evaluate a language past the hello world stage, I try to do something more complex. Which is where the generics come in. Imagine for a second that I may want a hashmap with a custom key/hash function (most often it would actually be a set) for my own datatype. I can't just use the built in hashmap _language construct_ (the hashmap is it's own, very special type), I either have to write a hashmap implementation myself or wrap a hashmap in it's own type and have custom getters and setters which would extract a key from my custom type that is intended to be stored in the map. It might be more go to do said things, but then it just means that it's more go to write code that is more likely to be buggy.

[saghm]

I definitely agree with you that I prefer having generics to not having them and would consider that in my evaluation of a language; I just found it strange that a random reference to the lack of generics was dropped in the middle of an otherwise cohesive description of the pros and cons of the "hello world" experience.

[stcredzero]

No, but if you believe the ramblings of the standard HN commenter who complains about Go, very soon afterwards the lack of generics has driven them to gnashing teeth and rending hair.

[bschwindHN]

What's the default behavior now? This greatly annoyed me when I first started with Go.

[stcredzero]

GOPATH now defaults to $HOME/go or the equivalent for your OS.