Always! People underestimate the subliminal effects of good design. In the early days of Slack, several people I know (not in tech) were practically begging to use it at their workplace. The reason? The branding was "mesmerizing," particularly the hash. I think the same goes for programming languages.

Everything is about impression and perception. For example, I have observed that people treat me more seriously when I dress better than with the typical "jeans+tshirt" combo.

Now, we can say this is superficial bullshit, but at the end of the day, the way you dress influence people's perception of you.

So in my opinion, Go's new branding give it a more "serious" image and perhaps people unfamiliar with the language will be more inclined to consider it.

Again, it's superficial bullshit, but it is what it is.

It seems like a factual claim, not a sentiment.

Languages do need to develop a critical mass of resources related to them, people need to provide services for them, and you do want to identify which ones are official. For that purpose, a brand identity is going to be helpful. (At least as helpful as a brand can be.)

In a nutshell, it's about ensuring people can distinguish between golang.org and w3schools.com.

Probably for similar reasons that modern "brands" developed: to compete with the competition who mostly provide the same thing as you.

One of the reasons I really like Python is it never had any of this crap. It's popular just because it's useful and people like it.

Around the time exploits needed fancy names.

Since people have to convince their management that a given language is a suitable choice to run the company's main product.

I don't think languages should need branding, but the marketing department of a large corporate disagrees in this case

Most people who got into Laravel did it because it was pretty.