Go does not have a lot of new features, but mostly a specific collection of convenient ones (static compilation, GC, etc.) Not sure how many new languages have truly new features, vs. how many are improvements in productivity (human and machine).

My point is that generics are not a new idea either, and plenty of languages offer them. Go is not meant (anymore) to replace C/C++/Java or even Rust. It will never have all the features of those, and probably should not.

But it seems impossible to have a HN discussion on Golang without part of the thread getting hijacked with "But generics!!!" This make no more sense to me than considering other languages incomplete because they don't generate static binaries.

> But it seems impossible to have a HN discussion on Golang without part of the thread getting hijacked with "But generics!!!"

Surely the exact same criticism could be leveraged at go proponents pointing out the exact same features they love every time, should discussions of Go simply stop until the next major release, and only new features (if any) be discussable?

> Surely the exact same criticism could be leveraged at go proponents pointing out the exact same features they love every time

This thread was started by someone complaining about lack of generics.

> should discussions of Go simply stop until the next major release, and only new features (if any) be discussable?

Why? Because there's no reasonable middle ground between "don't ever talk about Go until there's a release" and "hijack every thread about Go"?

Note my point in that line was not about criticism, but about thread hijacking.

Learning languages for their new ideas is fine, but there are other reasons you might want to learn a language. For example, because it is a good language for the specific kind of program that you want to write.

Go hits some sweet spot, apparently, since some people are happier using it than anything else they had tried. If no "new ideas" are going to help them, why should they chose more "innovative" languages instead of Go?

Because it's much faster than other languages at its difficulty level. Which can save a lot of money.