what about pattern matching? that is imo one of the saddest omissions from go - it's not a "huge" feature like continuations, but i find it makes a language significantly more pleasant to work with.
That was a huge WTF to me. Isn't your job as a language designer to do that work so that I, the language user, don't have to?
Also I'm pretty sure the amount of work in the compiler was only one of the considerations, and while I don't doubt your account of your conversation with rob, I doubt it was the main consideration in this design decision.
There are pros and cons for both models, but they are roughly equivalent and I never missed pattern matching in Go.