The problem is that the community did indulge the author and the other Go maintainers 5 years ago and their was an apparent refusal to see lack-of-generics as an issue, almost as though Turing-completeness was sufficient justification to not include them.
"Find us examples and show us so we can ponder this further" is incredibly condescending after we did that 5 years ago and they decided to stall (or to use the author's term, "wait") on the issue. Honestly I think it might be too late for generics to be added, because the large body of existing interfaces aren't generic and likely would have a very high transition cost.
(A bit late to your comment, but I found it valuable:)
It's actually a classic bulshitting tactic by people who have no actual argument. Effectively, it's "well, we'll defer a choice until we can PROVE that decision X is PERFECT in EVERY way."
That's not to say: IF there's a real, quantifiable doubt, then by all means, continue to discuss (but preferably set time limits), but to do that you MUST set out precisely what the problems are, what potential solutions could (and couldn't) be, etc. etc. Not just vague "this feels wrong" objections.
"Find us examples and show us so we can ponder this further" is incredibly condescending after we did that 5 years ago and they decided to stall (or to use the author's term, "wait") on the issue. Honestly I think it might be too late for generics to be added, because the large body of existing interfaces aren't generic and likely would have a very high transition cost.