The main use case of generics is generic containers, and the two most popular generic containers - lists and maps - have always been part of the language (including their built-in generic functions). So in most cases, in a typical web project, you could indeed get away without generics entirely. Only in a few cases you'd be forced to use codegen/reflection/duplication - when you have to use complex algorithms which lists/maps can't satisfy. However, the Go team and the community had always been open to the idea of adding generics to the language (the official FAQ already in 2013 talked about potentially adding generics in the future), they just weren't sure how to implement them properly without overcomplicating the language (which is advertized as being simple), and generics can easily add a ton of complexity. So the introduction of generics was postponed because there were other more important features to iron out, considering that slices/maps already covered most cases. I think the breakthrough happened with the realization that code is more often read than written, so it's OK to make the language a little more complex for a library's author, most users won't see a considerable increase in complexity.

> It was endless arguments from Go users that generics aren't needed

There was (and still is) a small minority of Go users that insist generics are bad, but in my observation it's nowhere near the majority view. As a concrete datapoint, the GitHub issue on this[1] has 2k upvotes and 150 downvotes. A sizeable minority, but a minority nonetheless.

As is often the case, "the Go community" is far from heterogeneous, and it's hard to really get an idea what "the average Go programmer" thinks, and easy to criticise the most extreme elements.

Certainly for the Go team itself the position was always that 1) generics are useful, but 2) we're not quite sure how to best implement them. Some people disagree with that viewpoint too, which is fair enough, but it's really quite a different one.

[1]: https://github.com/golang/go/issues/15292

Not sure what you've been reading, but I've been reading lots of Go users who don't like generics arguing with lots of other Go users who do like generics. It's not a "those Go users" vs "us sensible people" flame war, it's a multifaceted debate with lots of sides, all of which contain some Go users.

I think you're misrepresenting the debate.

I've never seen anyone argue that generics aren't a useful concept, but I've seen plenty argue that it isn't worth the cost in incurs. That is a quite a different debate then the one you are outlining.