[shurcooL]

There are people who want their language to be as complicated and feature-rich as possible. They have lots of choices available, including C++1*, Java, Ruby, etc.

Those languages probably don't have anything that has only one idiomatic solution. Even writing a for loop will have multiple different but viable alternatives.

Then there are people who want their language to be as simple as possible, yet still powerful enough to allow you to create all the things you can with Go.

There are very few such languages. In fact, there are a few things/special rules I'd like to see simplified in Go because they have less benefit than cost.

Having a simple language allows for some cool benefits, and if Go starts to compete with C++ for number of features, it will lose its main distinctive property.

[frowaway001]

That's a false dichotomy.

The desire for a simple language doesn't mean you have to accept all the mistakes Go made. Go is just not a very good language. It would be completely irrelevant without the Google name behind it.

[shurcooL]

> Go is just not a very good language.

It certainly could be better (this is true of everything that's not perfect), but it is being improved (and it's open source, so you and I can help make it better). I already prefer it over many other languages.

> It would be completely irrelevant without the Google name behind it.

You mean... It would be irrelevant if Google and other people who work on it (being open source, many contributors aren't Google employees) did not make it what it is?

That's like saying... <any product> would be irrelevant if <those who made it> didn't make it as good as it is. It is a true statement, but how is it useful?

[frowaway001]

> but it is being improved

The things I care about can't be fixed, because they are fundamentally wrong in Go, they are not just some little oversight.

> I already prefer it over many other languages.

If I would start aiming low enough, I could also certainly find languages which are even worse than Go.

Honestly, I don't care. I prefer languages which do things better than X, not languages which are less worse than X.

> You mean... [...]

Eh no? I meant what I said. If the people who created Go wouldn't have been able to leverage the Google name (either by working at a company or by Google saying "don't use our brand for your toy projects") nobody would have cared.

But people said "OMG, Google invented online search!!! Then–by definition–they have to be language design experts, too!!!" and the tragedy unfolded.

[shurcooL]

Fair enough, it sounds like your needs are very different from what Go satisfies.

Just out of curiosity, what language(s) do you prefer to use over Go?

> Eh no? I meant what I said. If the people who created Go wouldn't have been able to leverage the Google name (either by working at a company or by Google saying "don't use our brand for your toy projects") nobody would have cared.

I have a very good counter-example for you. Google also made Dart. I have no interest in Dart and I don't think it's anywhere near as good as Go from what I can tell about it.

[frowaway001]

> counter-example

That's not a counter-example (necessary vs. sufficient).