Comment by tex0

Disagree. Most critiques of Go I've read have been weak. This one was decent. And I say that as a big enjoyer of Go.

That said I really wish there was a revamp where they did things right in terms of nil, scoping rules etc. However, they've commited to never breaking existing programs (honorable, understandable) so the design space is extremely limited. I prefer dealing with local awkwardness and even excessive verbosity over systemic issues any day.

Few things are truly forced upon me in life but walking away from everything that I don't like would be foolish. There is compromise everywhere and I don't think entering into a tradeoff means I'm not entitled to have opinions about the things I'm trading off.

I don't think the article sounds like someone didn't take the time to grasp the language. It sounds like it's talking about the kind of thing that really only grates on you after you've seriously used the language for a while.

This article was a well-thought-out one from someone who has obviously really used Go to build real things.

I quite like Go and use it when I can. However, I wish there were something like Go, without these issues. It's worth talking about that. For instance, I think most of these critiques are fair but I would quibble with a few:

1. Error scope: yes, this causes code review to be more complex than it needs to be. It's a place for subtle, unnecessary bugs.

2. Two types of nil: yes, this is super confusing.

3. It's not portable: Go isn't as portable as C89, but it's pretty damn portable. It's plenty portable to write a general-purpose pre-built CLI tool in, for instance, which is about my bar for "pragmatic portability."

4. Append ownership & other slice weirdness: yes.

5. Unenforced `defer`: yes, similar to `err`, this introduces subtle bugs that can only be overcome via documentation, careful review, and boilerplate handling.

6. Exceptions on top of err returns: yes.

7. utf-8: Hasn't bitten me, but I don't know how valid this critique is or isn't.

8. Memory use: imo GC is a selling-point of the language, not a detriment.

In my opinion, the section on data ownership contained the most egregious and unforgivable example of go's flaws. The behavior of append in that example is the kind of bug-causing or esoteric behavior that should never make it into any programming language. As a regular writer of go code, I understand why this particular quirk of the language exists, but I hope I never truly "grasp" it to the extent that I forgive it.

I'm surprised people in these comments aren't focusing more on the append example.

Sure but life choices are one thing, but this critique is still valuable. I learned a thing or two, and also think go can improve (I understand it's because I don't grok the language but I still prefer map to append in a loop)

Go indeed has some problems. But IMHO, none described in this article is valid.

Which begs the question: What is your favorite language?

"Love it or leave it!"