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"The general attitude in Go community towards generics seems to have degenerated into one consisting of a mix of disgust and condescension, unfortunately."

I think this attempts to make the practical state of generics in Go into some sort of religious disagreement, which is unfortunate, as that isn't the case whatsoever.

Whenever the topic of generics come up, the prevailing sentiment is that they would be great, but that the Go creators have some implementation difficulties and some competing goals that make it impractical at this time. I don't believe I've ever seen anyone of consequence in the Go community treat generics as anything other than "would be really nice".

It is a gap in Go and is widely treated as one.

Go absolutely needs more robust collection types, however. Total agreement on that.

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It's not a religious disagreement between the Go team and those asking for it. The Go team has simply stopped talking about it. But the reactions by the community to people bringing up generics on golang-nuts has become outright hostile.

That is more about group decorum than any technical debate.

Generics have been discussed to death regarding Go, and there is a long and complex history of the choices and realities in Go. So it is understandable that people can get a little irritated when someone stumbles in and declares that maybe Go should add generics, usually then decorating their claims with lots of exaggerated hysterics (most recently that Go is an "embarrassment" because it lacks generics. Quite the accolades for the people who work long and hard on it).

Refusing to debate the issue is not understandable at all, especially because the Go team has not rejected generics on principle.

The most popular response to any language debate seems to be "it's not a problem in practice", implying all critics just "stumble in" and don't know what they're talking about.

They are not refusing to debate.

They have debated this many times over in the past.

What they don't do is repeating that debate every week. It would take a lot of their time and is largely pointless (in the sense that person that starts the debate with 'go sucks because it has no generics' will not be convinced that it was the right (or at least practical) decision to make regardless of how cogent your arguments are).

I don't want to force anyone to take part in a particular debate if they feel they have nothing to add. But not taking part in a debate and denigrating those who do want to debate an issue are two very different things. It's the latter that irks me.

Well, a good example is that we literally had the golang generics conversation on HN yesterday. Forum goers are not machines; fatigue can easily set in. What can be perceived as hostility to those who desire debate can just as easily be people who are tired of the same "debate" over and over again.

That said, that's when a community should write up an faq[1] and then simply point to it in a polite way that avoids engaging in the same conversation again while still being welcoming to people thinking of joining that community. If people aren't doing that, it's somewhat understandable, but long term the acrimony can be poisonous.

[1] http://golang.org/doc/faq#generics

The FAQ merely states that generics remain an open issue. That doesn't replace a debate about it. On the contrary, it shows why a debate is necessary.

I fully understand that the Go team and long time forum dwellers are not inclined to discuss the same generics proposals over and over again. So don't!

New ideas should be welcome though.

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