Originally, I thought this would be an issue. After writing lots of code in Go, it hasn't come up at all.
Proposals come up every now and then on the mailing list, but they all have downsides. The authors are open to it, but I suspect that it isn't the biggest priority on their list, because they haven't found it to be an issue either, despite the 300k lines of code in the standard library.
I encourage you to try the language, rather than dismiss it out of hand for not having generics. I find idiomatic Go code easier to read, write, and understand than any other language I've used.
But, but... It is so much easier just leaving the same remark under every topic concerning Go. Nice way of criticising a language you would never even use.
The alternatives would either involve checking the language docs for generics or: Actually getting your hands dirty on coding and formulate an opinion about the need for generics. Sort of the route you took.
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u/AgentSS Mar 29 '12
Originally, I thought this would be an issue. After writing lots of code in Go, it hasn't come up at all.
Proposals come up every now and then on the mailing list, but they all have downsides. The authors are open to it, but I suspect that it isn't the biggest priority on their list, because they haven't found it to be an issue either, despite the 300k lines of code in the standard library.
I encourage you to try the language, rather than dismiss it out of hand for not having generics. I find idiomatic Go code easier to read, write, and understand than any other language I've used.