[9rx]

Of course, if you go back and watch the original Go announcement it said that it would need generics once they figured out how to do it. And when the first version of generics landed it was said that generic methods would be added later, once they figured out how to do it. So that isn't applicable here. The need was always recognized.

[zarzavat]

If Go had just taken an off-the-shelf implementation of generics in 2009 then they could have spent the last 16 years deliberating over something useful, rather than attempting to reinvent programming language theory.

The impression I have always gotten from Go's designers is that they are rather arrogant and averse to the idea of using other people's work. They want to develop everything from first principles, but by so doing end up with poor reinventions of well-studied concepts.

[9rx]

> and averse to the idea of using other people's work.

They did use someone else's work, though. If you recall, Philip Wadler (of Haskell fame) designed Go's generics.

> but by so doing end up with poor reinventions of well-studied concepts.

Which is funny as there is probably nobody on earth that would be more capable than Wadler to get the job done. His pedigree in that area of work is pretty astounding. If he couldn't do more than create a poor reinvention, what hope did the laymen working on the Go core team have?

Answer: They had no hope. It's not like they weren't trying. Ian Lance Taylor, for instance, is well known for beginning work on generics in Go before it was even first released to the public. He, among others, quite simply, were unable to figure it out.

Everything looks easy and straightforward when observed comfortably from an armchair, I suppose.

[pjmlp]

Yes, the same guy that supported the effort to add generics to Java, a decade beforee Go came to be, talk about not getting language design history.

Stop excusing them, they were the first to acknolowdge being wrong in first place,

"They are likely the two most difficult parts of any design for parametric polymorphism. In retrospect, we were biased too much by experience with C++ without concepts and Java generics. We would have been well-served to spend more time with CLU and C++ concepts earlier."

-- https://go.googlesource.com/proposal/+/master/design/go2draf...

[9rx]

> Stop excusing them

What is there to excuse? Your quote confirms that they simply don't know what they're doing as was already established. Not that anyone should expect them to. They're just regular average humans, same as every other random Joe you encounter while walking down the street, who all equally have their own failings and shortcomings. Why HN is constantly trying to put these particular people on a pedestal, I'll never know. Jealously that regular bumbling idiots just like them accidentally stumbled into creating something popular (for some definition of popular), perhaps?

[pjmlp]

They certainly knew what they were doing.

The first step to acknowledge not being great language designers is to actually be humble to learn from the work of others.

Not assert to all "we know better", and then repeatly having to backpedals on such assertions.

[9rx]

> They certainly knew what they were doing.

Based on what? Sure, the one guy managed to hack up the first version of C, but it took a complete rewrite and some major changes to become what we would actually recognize as C. Not exactly indicative of someone who knows what he is doing. And everything in Go was copied straight from Winterbottom's work.