> Generic methods are a huge win for the language. I've been waiting on these kinds of improvements to the type system ...

It's funny that you and many others have found the introduction of "generics" in Go to be highly valuable, considering one of the motivations for Go's existence was:

  Its designers were primarily motivated by their shared dislike of C++[0]

One of the language features C++ provides, "templates", was explicitly rejected by the language authors as being antithetical to Go philosophy[1]. Thompson put it bluntly:

  DDJ: In the presentation before the awarding of the Japan 
  Prize today, you were quoted on the distinction between 
  reasearch and development. [The former, Thompson stated, 
  was directionless, whereas development had a specific goal 
  in mind.] So in that context, is Go experimental?
  
  KT: Yes. When the three of us [Thompson, Rob Pike, and 
  Robert Griesemer] got started, it was pure research. The 
  three of us got together and decided that we hated C++. 
  [laughter] [2]

And now, years later, generics are "a huge win."

0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(programming_language)#Hist...

1 - https://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2012/06/less-is-exponenti...

2 - https://web.archive.org/web/20110521080746/http://drdobbs.co...