[ithkuil]

Upgrading to the latest release of the Go toolchains is generally a painless experience; the Go team has a good track record of enforcing backward compatibility. Hopefully this means that you can assume other users will be able to use code targeting new features of go 1.18 in pretty much the same time window it takes for other releases to supplant old ones, and make this feature not unlike previous (minor) language features that nevertheless would break users who cling to too old toolchains.

I hope that the publicity caused by generics doesn't taint this release causing people to unnecessary procrastinate a toolchains update they would have otherwise done if it wasn't for generics.

[oppositelock]

Sometimes, people can't be on the latest version of software due to various compliance and regulatory issues, and updating anything to a new version requires some kind of re-certification or new auditing. So, when supporting such users, you need to work carefully on balancing their inability to update, versus yours to move ahead.

Hacking on some projects or experiments is one thing, but say you're providing code for the automotive industry or the payment card industry; you're in for a world of regulatory hurt.