Ask a dynamic language enthusiast about that. Dynamic languages don't have "proper generics" but what they do have is all the generic use cases covered... so... which is more important, having a particular feature, or being able to do all the things that the feature can do?

A generic enthusiast can argue that the type safety is a fundamental difference. A dynamic language enthusiast is obviously going to take issue with that. I'll let the two of you fight it out.

From a Haskell perspective, dynamic types and the sort of generics that Java implements are probably closer together than you might think. Haskell expects your "generics" (which are actually the type classes; what haskell calls "generics" is more like what other languages call "reflection") to be able to provide mathematical guarantees like "If I have an A, I am guaranteed to be able to produce a B for that" which is much stronger than what imperative generics tend to be able to guarantee.

>Ask a dynamic language enthusiast about that. Dynamic languages don't have "proper generics" but what they do have is all the generic use cases covered... so... which is more important, having a particular feature, or being able to do all the things that the feature can do?

Well, the "things that the feature can do" in a dynamic language you can do in Go with interface{}.

It's the one thing you can't do (in Go or a dynamic language) that Generics are all about: type-safe generic code.

So, you'd made the parents case for them...

Well what's more important that dynamic languages don't give you is knowing what the hell the type is supposed to be able to do when you maintain the code.

I worked in C++, C#, and Java for 15 years before my work in Go. I've used generics. I will freely admit to not having a lot of experience in functional or ML style programming languages a la Rust. I'd love to spend some time getting up to speed on Rust, it seems like an interesting language, and at the very least, a great learning experience.

I would definitely recommend looking at Rust (and the ML family).

I have spent most of my programming life in C++, Java, and Prolog (probably in that order). Two years ago I switched to Go for most of my work, because I needed a native language, C++ was just becoming too much effort, and Rust was still changing monthly. I have written some substantial projects in Go, including a neural net natural language parser and a part-of-speech tagger, both used to annotate web corpora.

Since 1.0 has been released I have slowly transitioned into Rust and am now using it for most new work. What I strongly like about Rust above Go: parametric polymorphism (which I do use on a daily basis), limited operator overloading, sum types, RAII, the borrows checker, Cargo, quickcheck [1]. What I strongly dislike compared to Go: compile times.

Deep in my heart, I like ML more than Rust ;), but having a quickly-growing ecosystem is also important.

[1] There is property-based checking for Go, but in my experience it's usefulness grows with the strength of the type system.

I really want to learn Rust. It's been on my next-to-learn list for a while now. I have limited time because of young kids and getting embroiled in politics (actual politics). Someday :)

Rust is not a functional programming language :-) it has features which are ML-like, and it has first-class functions, but it doesn't really encourage functional idioms like the ML languages do.

If you want a great intro to ML-style statically typed functional programming (without the Haskell-style monads and functors jargon), check out https://www.coursera.org/learn/programming-languages/ . You'll get a lot out of even just going through the (10 minute each) lecture videos, Prof. Dan Grossman is a great explainer and it's a treat finding out the cool syntax, semantics and idioms of an ML language.

If you want to learn an interesting language, try Swift.

But if you really want a "great learning experience", you should look at Haskell or F#.

Finally, if you want your mind blown, learn yourself a Lisp.

You're missing his point. Maybe you should consider that people who don't have the same opinion as you (Go doesn't have this feature, so it sucks) don't have the same opinion for valid and rationale reasons, not just ignorance.

Maybe so, but I reject the argument put forward in favor of that position.

I actually lean in your direction. I've strongly headed back to static typing in the last 3-4 years after a lot of dynamic typing. I'm just not in the mood to have that argument with dynamic typing enthusiasts right now. :) I've done my time on that battlefield.