[munificent]

What I find particularly off-putting is that this attitude of superiority is sometimes married with objective incorrectness. If you're going to claim something is black and white, it should actually be black and white.

&&, ||, switch, select, for, and while all do conditional execution in Go.

So the rule is not "A language needs only one conditional control flow construct." The rule is really, "We didn't think a conditional operator was worth it." That's a fine rule, but it's better to be honest about it than to pretend the language was designed around some pure principle that doesn't actually exist.

[skybrian]

Yeah, I agree about it being off-putting. There's very little science in programming language ergonomics, so it all comes down to taste, right?

However, I wonder how much of this is a difference in substance and how much is about writing style? There is an older, authoritive style that has an implicit "in our opinion, of course" and sounds pretty grating these days.

I remember being taught in school to remove "I think" and qualifiers expressing uncertainty, under the theory that in an opinion piece, that's understood.

Especially these days when hyperbole is common, I prefer writers that have a humble writing style, but also try not to get hung up on stylistic differences.