Experiences Using Go as a Teaching Language with Young Programmers

The reason why a more succinct form for numeric iteration isn't there is that Go has no generics, therefore no generic interfaces, therefore no Iterator interface, therefore no iterators. So Go had no choice but to build all syntaxes that look like iterators directly into the language.

Yes, but in general, needing that is the exception, not the rule.

Ironically, a great deal of those exceptions tend to arise when doing toy projects and teaching children, so, I'll grant a solid touche there. :)

"Python's for loop always does for value in sequence, so there's less syntax."

Well, in a straight-up contest, Go and Python actually sorta... tie, or very nearly. Go's for has four versions (by my count):

    1. for x := range y {...}, value iteration
    2. for init; cond; post {...}, the traditional 3-element for loop
    3. for cond {...}, which is basically the while loop
    4. for {...}, "loop forever"

In Python, that's:

    1. for x in y
    2. actually a bit of a pain, but for i, x in range(y) + break
       usually covers it. (Go has break too, of course.)
    3. while cond:
    4. while True

In the general "syntax to inhale", I gotta say Python is the clear loser. It's the clear loser due to being a featureful language that has evolved a lot over the decades, in a way that is generally to its advantage, but in this particular context, no, it's no contest. Python has way more syntax than Go. It is way easier to write idiomatic Python code that someone with 4 weeks of experience in Python will look at and not even know where to start searching the manual to find out what just happened (generator comprehensions in particular can be really sneaky). Go could be covered in its syntactic entirity in a well-paced high school semester.

I'm personally a bit ambivalent here. Python has been my goto recommendation for "teach new people with this" language for a good long time, but I am forced to admit that Go is potentially at least competitive, with the right resources created for it. It's a really different spin on the newbie experience, but it has a certain appeal. I'd probably stick with Python until those resources appear, though.

for range does iterate over integer arrays / slices. The reason the C-style for loop exists is because sometimes you don't want to iterate the entire stack. eg

    // iterate half the stack:
    for i := 0; i < len(slice) / 2; i++ {}

    // iterate with a stepping:
    for i := 0; i < len(slice); i+=2 {}

    // iterate from a different starting position:
    for i := 5; i < len(slice); i++ {}

    // reverse iteration:
    for i := len(slice)-1; i>=0; i-- {}