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Comment by johnfn | Hacker News Reader

I can't believe that I read a nice article about working on a massive project in Go over a couple of years - a meaningful experience that we could probably all learn from - and the top comment doesn't build on the content of the post at all, but is rather a thinly veiled accusation of "Go is a terrible language".

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Really? Because your profile says you've been a member for over 2700 days, so you should be used to HN comments by now.

Well I can definitely believe that the first reply to my comment is something pedantic and unrelated to the meaning of the comment. ;-)

LOL, you made my day.

Over time, I've come to notice that once any online forum reaches a certain critical mass of programmers, nearly any mention of a specific programming language will devolve into a flamewar about that language.

I find it frustrating, but I also suspect that it's been that case since approximately forever ago. One day I plan to don a flame retardant suit and wade into Usenet archives to see if programmers were as prone to language flamewars 30+ years ago as they are now.

I'm guessing the answer is probably yes. :)

  ... if programmers were as prone to language
  flamewars 30+ years ago as they are now.

  I'm guessing the answer is probably yes. :)

Your guess is spot on. Not only languages (C vs Pascal, "why doesn't anyone use Ada?"), but probably best remembered for the vi vs emacs crusades. Though about 20+ years ago there were some pretty heated exchanges regarding OOP which seem to still smolder to this day (see HN history for evidence :-)).

There's a reason why Godwin's law[0] came about :-D

0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law

I think it's the whole bikeshedding thing, where people will jump to talking about the most superficial thing they have an opinion about.

> but is rather a thinly veiled accusation of "Go is a terrible language".

That's because it is.

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