I am worried that there might be a dangerous trend in conversations about go on HN recently. There seems to be a tendency toward ad hominem comments against the go authors.
The article itself is a great read. I love hearing interesting and honest commentary about the language. But I wonder if comments like "for reasons that appear to be political, does not have integer Min and integer Max functions" are appropriate. Later the author mentions "I get a similar sense of refusal-to-engage — the authors are communicative, to be sure, but in a didactic way." If the go community (or the programming community at large) truly has the sense that the go authors are unwilling to engage with the users of the language, then that's a big problem. However, are these sort of off the cuff comments the right way to start a discussion about it? At the very least, I wish that the author would provide specific evidence for these claims. I'm sure that there is some justification for them, but what the author is telling us is his inference, and I would appreciate an opportunity to read the source material and decide for myself. FWIW I have been programming in go for 2.5 years and made a few trips to the go-nuts mailing list. I don't share the author's impression, but I also haven't read every thread on the mailing list.
That's far from the worst of it, of course. I have read comments calling the go authors arrogant, ignorant, or conceited. If you insist on criticizing the go authors, I would hope that you could at least keep it professional and provide a link to some comment/literature to back up your criticism.
I welcome criticism of go, or of any topic for that matter. I just want to avoid unfair characterization and irrelevant ad hominem comments. Am I being too defensive or do other people share this concern?
> However, are these sort of off the cuff comments the right way to start a discussion about it?
Well it is a persons' opinion. There are some facts, some humor, some personal opinions. I am not sure the author planned on being on the front page of HN. I don't think he submitted his own article. It is up to the readers to put things in the appropriate "bins" so to speak -- "This is good advice", "I don't like this part", "This is just a personal attack" and so on. Sometimes the same article can contain a variety of things.
The article itself is a great read. I love hearing interesting and honest commentary about the language. But I wonder if comments like "for reasons that appear to be political, does not have integer Min and integer Max functions" are appropriate. Later the author mentions "I get a similar sense of refusal-to-engage — the authors are communicative, to be sure, but in a didactic way." If the go community (or the programming community at large) truly has the sense that the go authors are unwilling to engage with the users of the language, then that's a big problem. However, are these sort of off the cuff comments the right way to start a discussion about it? At the very least, I wish that the author would provide specific evidence for these claims. I'm sure that there is some justification for them, but what the author is telling us is his inference, and I would appreciate an opportunity to read the source material and decide for myself. FWIW I have been programming in go for 2.5 years and made a few trips to the go-nuts mailing list. I don't share the author's impression, but I also haven't read every thread on the mailing list.
That's far from the worst of it, of course. I have read comments calling the go authors arrogant, ignorant, or conceited. If you insist on criticizing the go authors, I would hope that you could at least keep it professional and provide a link to some comment/literature to back up your criticism.
I welcome criticism of go, or of any topic for that matter. I just want to avoid unfair characterization and irrelevant ad hominem comments. Am I being too defensive or do other people share this concern?