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by dlisboa 1073 days ago
> Few of the critics who "knew about programming languages" have created any language that ever made it into the top 10 programming languages in the world.

I often encounter some people in programming which I think lack humility. It's fine to question dogmas and the "big heads", but one has to look at the caliber of people you're up against and maybe give them the benefit of the doubt, if only a little bit.

I certainly wouldn't read a few PLT books and lambda-the-ultimate.org and then point to Ken Thompson and Rob Pike and say "your language has no <Type System thing>, you don't know what you're doing". These are not amateurs.

It's also doubtful they liked everything they put in, or disliked something they left out. Even Rust's creator didn't like some of the direction his language took.

If we were to ask other famous language designers they probably have a fonder feeling towards Go than people in this thread, knowing all of the hard design decisions one has to make to create an impactful language with an identity.