| > In this case, I suppose my specific complaint is that I'm unable to make `range` work transparently with an arbitrary type. Sure, fair enough. But note that you've now shifted the criticism from "I have to import 4 packages" (which was wrong) over "I need to know implementation details of packages" (which was wrong) to "I don't like that Go doesn't have operator overloading". > I want to think of a file as a black box full of strings. And what exactly is preventing you from doing that? Like, how exactly is the language preventing anyone from providing this much higher level API? You could even make it work with range, if you so desire (it would be considered very unidiomatic, but presumably you don't care). The stdlib provides you with composable pieces to achieve the job you want. I still find this complaint incredibly weird, unless you assume that everyone wants to view files as just a bunch of lines (I'd argue, these days, the overwhelming majority of files probably aren't). Like, you will still need the lower-level API; where's the problem with having an stdlib which focuses on providing composable pieces and then having some library do the composition for higher-level concerns? Last time I checked, having small composable units of code with clearly separated concerns was pretty much universally considered a good thing. > it's how the Reader API works, and whether I read a full or a partial line This is just a random aside, but: You never have to care about that, unless you specifically want to. But I would argue that code that calls io.Reader.Read is likely wrong - unless it does so to wrap it. Use io.ReadFull. |