With the mix of affection and disdain one traditionally feels for a younger brother, i refer to Go as "systems PHP". It may not be a sophisticated language; it may not produce beautiful code; it may, arguably, even have inexcusable flaws. But it is astoundingly easy to learn to the point where someone can be productive with it.

This is a terrifically powerful, and very unusual, advantage for a language to have. Master programmers won't be choosing it as their tool of choice. It won't be used to attack the craft's hardest problems. But it allows a huge number of people to write programs they otherwise would not have been able to write, and, conversely, a huge number of programs to be written which otherwise would not have been written. There's something rather "quantity has a quality all its own" about it. As with PHP, this is something of a mixed blessing, but it certainly puts a dent in the world.