Ok, "some of the most senior engineers ever to work at Google" don't seem to know that static bounds checking don't require dependent types: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45150008

> You don't get to play the "ad hominem" card while calling them names

The entire article explains it at length why there's the impression, it's not ad-hominem.

Previous threads on this story have spelled out specifically which Googlers were behind this design, and, again, it's embarrassing that anybody is trying to defend the hill of "protobuf's designers were amateurs". You can keep digging in if you want.