There is no discussion if the language is good, it's already quite convincingly proven it's good. The question was if generics would make the language even better. Some people think that's a no brainer, others are not so sure, and the latter group included the core maintainers.

People use the language because it is good, I think at this point one can state that as objective fact. Once people use it, they'll complain when something is not as nice as it could be, like the error handling, and like the generics.

I wonder if in 2000 people felt the way about Java 1.3 people feel about Go now. Java had a similar rise to prevalence, and it also lacked some features we now consider crucial, such as generics. I personally would never want to go back to Java 1.3. I feel I'd much rather code in Go instead, even if it lacks generics. But I still think it's worth considering if Go would turn out to become Java, if it now embraces generics.