[dmnd]

Amusing that this post goes from

> My first response when the plan to add generics was announced was “meh”. In my 5+ years working in Go, I can probably count on one hand the number of times that I felt like I really needed generics. Most of the code I write in my day job is very specific to the domain and doesn’t fit the use case that generics aim to fill.

to

> I love that I was able to delete 95% of my code because of generics.

[dm319]

It's interesting because I remember all the early discussions against generics in Go centred around "what Real World scenario do you need it for?"

An argument against generics was that people found it hard to find examples that were 'real' where generics would be beneficial, and so because it was rarely needed the question of whether the language should be drastically bodged/ruined/adjusted for this feature was called into question.

In retrospect you had a self-selecting population of people who loved Go and presumably didn't have much use for generics, whereas people who did presumably used something else.

I guess all we can learn from this is that human imagination is poor, and many of us need the thing in our hand to work out what we can do with it.

[5e92cb50239222b]

That's why you need some breadth of experience with many different languages, folks. That's exactly why you don't limit yourself to a single (extremely simplified to the point of stupidity) language.

[skinkestek]

That's also why one should take a look at back and think if it is smart to uncritically said generics were just dumb.

Same with people who unconditionally recommended WhatsApp not that long ago.

Or people like me who told everyone Google was still nice and a driving force for good until a few years ago ( yes, I still have some hope that they will change their ways and don't think others are much better but I am somewhat bitter and I don't give them the benefit of doubt anymore :-| )