>I think of these languages, these tools, as something akin to violins and cellos. They’ve been around, virtually unchanged, for several hundreds years. They are an absolutely gigantic pain in the ass to play- they haven’t got any frets, they have tiny fingerboards designed to be played by scrawny, malnourished 15th century musicians. They’ve got tuning pegs designed for strings made out of animal guts and which rely on friction alone to stay in tune. They’re freaking baroque. And yet, they get played a lot. You might argue that their design actually encourages mistakes.

I wish people wouldn't make analogies about things they don't understand. Frets do not make string instruments automatically better, in fact they limit you in terms of intonation and vibrato. The fingerboards are exactly the size they need to be, and would be less ergonomic if they were simply made wider (every attempt at an ergonomic violin I've seen has involved changing the body shape to make it easier to hold, not widening the neck. Widening the neck substantially on a bass would just be completely unhelpful) and a lot harder to bow. Friction pegs were certainly designed for gut strings, and that's why you'll find geared tuners on many instruments that use steel strings (and sometimes even on ones that use guts).

I just find it funny that he doesn't like it when people who don't understand Go try to criticize it, and then criticizes something he doesn't understand in an effort to strengthen his argument.