I know what := means because I have a Pascal background, most programmers are used to = as being the assignment operator. But the mere fact that you asked me what ":=" means proves my point. It's not common and you don't expect everyone to know it.
Why range doesn't require parenthesis? It takes parameters just like make does.
But it's not the same: in Pascal := means assignment, whereas in Go it means variable declaration. Go uses = for assignment, as is the popular convention.
You must learn new things when you learn a new programming language. People should stop being surprised and/or upset by this. Besides, Go's syntax is not all that shocking or unusual, especially compared to Scala, Erlang, or Haskell. I regularly switch between Go, JavaScript, C, and Python and don't have any trouble adjusting.
"Why range doesn't require parenthesis? It takes parameters just like make does."
Range is a keyword, while make is a function. Range is used with a single value (the map, slice, or channel being ranged over), while make may take up to three arguments.
Please - it is really silly to critique the syntax of a language if you don't know the language.
You can always use i E = range e or similar, also range is not a function, it's part of go's syntax and always takes one argument. You don't need parens for the unary - operator.
Go does have different syntax from most C derived languages, but the differences are there for a reason. You need to learn any language to understand it.