They forgot the mindshare of PHP users. The tradeoffs Go makes are rather similar (simplicity, ease of deployment vs expressivenes and consistency).
Though I guess the same applies to PHP.
It's a lot nicer to write webapps in Go though since you have control over global state and not the per-request state of PHP, which makes for some easier solutions to problems (work-queues are easy to implement/use on the server-side unlike in PHP)
Also the stricter type system compared to PHP is nice in addition to static linking making it more portable than PHP (minus not being portable to shared hosters)
Guess the global state access and easier parallelization are the main selling points.
I wrote a few APIs with long running queues in PHP and Node.js and found it both a bit too clunky for that job.
A fix for master programmers is e.g. Rust, and a bunch of GC-based languages, from newcomers like Crystal and Nim to the battle-hardened JVM ecosystem, or Erlang/Elixir.
The way C++ did not displace C, or the way Ruby and Python did not displace PHP, these guys will not displace Go.
Longtime systems and UNIX pros, not language/compiler pros though. That would be someone like Anders Hejlsberg or Lars Bak respectively.
No, that was because the focus of Dart (replacing JS on web browsers) wasn't feasible, and even Google dropped it. Which says nothing about the quality of the language (which was selected for the Flutter SDK anyway).
Besides, popularity in tech, as in high school, doesn't say much. Engineering shouldn't be a pop culture.
>What about C?
What about C? That was made by Dennis Ritchie, not involved in Golang. And even so, it's not the best basis for a 2007-2017 language.
As far as Go design is concerned I believe that someone who designed few programming languages can be called a "pro" even if he doesn't agree with the mainstream opinion about what makes a good design. Simplicity is underestimated.
However if someone is coming from PHP, Go must look positively modern. Considering the millions of PHP programmers out there, Go can keep on growing for a long time.
Not to mention the fact that go fmt makes everyone’s code look exactly the same. No more weird, personal styles being brought into into source code or pointless discussions of naming conventions or indentation.
But what about static linking, fast compile times and awesome standard lib is like "stepping into the feature"?
Standard lib is just plain awesome. You can build most things right out of the box without searching the web for competing versions of the same thing. Web apps are a great example.
Fast compile times was a feature built into Go from the beginning. Presumably from people frustrated by compile times of large C/C++ codebases [1]. It’s about developer productivity.
1. https://golang.org/doc/faq#What_compiler_technology_is_used_...
Because they are invented at a time before storage and RAM is dirt cheap and lightning fast. It was painfully wasteful and slow to load a copy of the standard library for every process. Dynamic linking was invented basically because static linking wasn’t feasible.
Oh, and the IDE environment is amazing - you literally don't need much more than VSCode or vim (the language tools have built in refactoring support, formating, quick compile for syntax error, godoc).
And you have closures, something Java didn't have until 8, and even now many libraries don't support it.
There are bunch of comparisons Hugo vs Wordpress on internet.
Good static site generators are many. The point of a product might be near-zero transition friction.