Comment by 727564797069706 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 727564797069706 | Hacker News Reader

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727564797069706

I once liked Go a lot, then over time got frustrated by few things and moved on. Now I'm all about "Rust is the best thing since sliced bread!"

I find it a bit hard to understand why people are critizing Go "yaddayadda oh how wrong this decision is yaddayadda". Like, who cares. Let them do how they like it. Nobody is forcing anyone to use the language.

Go's design decisions are not a universally applicable law or anything that you must follow even if you don't like them. I mean, if you're using the language and dislike this decision, then it's a bit different story and I think you should influence the change through the official channels. Probably you've done it already.

Fact of the matter is that there are TONS of people out there (and here too) who agree with those decisions, keep using the language and enjoy it. And for that I'm happy for Go!

> I find it a bit hard to understand why people are critizing Go "yaddayadda oh how wrong this decision is yaddayadda". Like, who cares. Let them do how they like it. Nobody is forcing anyone to use the language.

A choice of programming language affects people other than the ones who decided on it. An obvious example is bug fixing and other maintenance; if for instance I find a bug in syncthing and want to fix it, I have to learn Go, because that's the programming language they chose. Another example is finding work; if most employers have systems written in Java, and you don't want to be picky about it, you have to learn and use Java. And finally, the popularity of a language directly affects its ecosystem's health, and since there's a limited amount of programmer time in the world, one language becoming more popular implies other languages become less popular (and after some point, their ecosystems begin to suffer).

Given all that, it makes sense that even people who do not like Go want its designers to make good choices (and get annoyed when they make bad choices), since its popularity means that there's a good chance that they will have someday to use it.

> Nobody is forcing anyone to use the language.

Except when your employer does

Nobody is forcing you to choose that employer

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