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by treve 2745 days ago
Sorry about mis-remembering his name, but my point was a bit more nuanced. The frustration I had was not that certain features were missing, but I was met with a response that suggested that I was wrong for even wanting these features.

It was a comment on my personal experiences of interacting with the Go community, not the language and its limitations. My hope wasn't that Go implements my every pet peeve, my hope is that the community has gained some humility since I last dipped my toes in it.

Pike seems especially aggressive when interacting with people he disagrees with and this was for me indicative of the culture. It's been a few years though, so maybe by now I'm wrong!

Here's Pike on the topic of syntax highlighting:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/golang-nuts/hJHCAaiL0so/E2mQ...

4 comments

I think you mis-linked there. The email message with the denigrating comment about people who like syntax highlighting is here...

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/golang-nuts/hJHCAaiL0s...

That was the day I dropped the mailing list.

I don't see anything denigrating there.

I disagree with Rob though, syntax highlighting is not juvenile, it's cargo cult programming.

"Syntax highlighting is juvenile."

That clearly implies anyone who uses syntax highlighting is juvenile. I'd say calling someone juvenile is meant to be denigrating.

> Pike seems especially aggressive when interacting with people he disagrees with and this was for me indicative of the culture. It's been a few years though, so maybe by now I'm wrong!

FWIW, as much as I agree with Rob Pike on most things, I totally agree that he's abrasive and his way of phrasing things is often unhelpful (even though I think people also tend to read contempt into his brevity that isn't there). If it helps, I think he has realized that in the meantime and is largely staying out of public discussions for that reason.

The community has gotten better. Early discussions were frequently marred hype, and it was often impossible to cut through the noise. However, talks given by the authors usually impressed me by being fairly even-handed, and open about the trade-offs that were taken.
He's literally just making a joke riffing on 1 Corinthians 13:11.
No, while he does reference that (just quoting it directly, not “riffing”), it's not just a joke, it's a reinforcement of his earlier dismissal, in the thread, of syntax highlighting as a “juvenile” practice parallel to colored rods used to teach arithmetic to young children, which grown ups should not need or use.