Others have suggested that Rob Pike and Ken Thompson have some language design experience, to state it mildly. I also want to point out...
> Russ Cox and the Go team learned that the loop variable capture semantics are flawed not by reflecting about how their language works, but through user feedback.
I think "user feedback" isn't the whole story. It's not just the Go team passively listening as users point out obvious flaws. I've noticed in other changes (e.g. the monotonic time change [1]) the Go team has done a pretty disciplined study of user code in Google's monorepo and on github. That's mentioned in this case too. This is a good practice, not evidence of failure.
I'm sure they could come up with a list of language decisions they disagree with.
I'm equally sure that if you asked kubb, kaba0, and three other strongly opinionated folks for a list of good language designers, each of the <5 lists you get back would be very short, and there'd be no overlap between them.
> Russ Cox and the Go team learned that the loop variable capture semantics are flawed not by reflecting about how their language works, but through user feedback.
I think "user feedback" isn't the whole story. It's not just the Go team passively listening as users point out obvious flaws. I've noticed in other changes (e.g. the monotonic time change [1]) the Go team has done a pretty disciplined study of user code in Google's monorepo and on github. That's mentioned in this case too. This is a good practice, not evidence of failure.
[1] https://go.googlesource.com/proposal/+/master/design/12914-m...