== Go keeps surprising me with its careful design and specification

When I started writing my entry on [[why it matters that map values
are unaddressable in Go GoAddressableValuesII]], I expected to end
it with a remark to the effect that I didn't understand why the
[[Go https://golang.org/]] authors had put this restriction in the
specification but they probably had good reasons. But by the time
I finished writing the entry, I had realized the language semantics
problem of allowing '_m["nosuchkey"]_' to be addressable. Then later
when I looked up [[how Go maps store their values (and keys)
GoHowMapsStored]] I saw how allowing you to take the address of a
map value probably wouldn't do what you wanted in natural Go.

I've had this experience more than once, where I've been surprised
by how quietly careful Go's design and specification is. There are
various technical areas of [[the Go specification
https://golang.org/ref/spec]] that have had what seemed like arcane
restrictions or rules, but when I've thought more deeply about them
I've come up with reasonably good reasons for the rules to exist.

(Sometimes these are small ones, like [[how arbitrary precision
constants affect cross compilation GoCrossCompilingConstants]].
Even things like [[always requiring delimited _if_ blocks have
reasons DanglingElseAndBlocks]].)

On the one hand, this shouldn't be surprising in general. The
designers of Go were quite experienced, knew what they were doing,
and spent a fair amount of time working on it. Given that, it's
very likely that everything in [[the Go specification]] was carefully
considered and has a solid reason behind it, even if it's not
immediately obvious.

On the other hand, this is not necessarily the usual experience
with languages, especially languages that haven't gone through a
formal (and somewhat adversarial) specification process. Solid
language specifications are genuinely hard to create and you don't
see them very often.

PS: This isn't to say that Go's design and specification is flawless,
even apart from features it simply doesn't have. I haven't gone
looking for flaws, but they probably exist and people have probably
written about them.