On my mac the go version of yes creates a binary that's 30x larger than the yes binary I have on a linux machine. 2MB vs ~65KB.
In fact, most embedded Linux thingy will be running the busybox version of core utilities instead of gnu coreutils for binary size reasons.
I other words, even gnu coreutils is too big.
It's pretty easy to avoid this problem anyway - just combine multiple tools into one binary like Busybox does.
In any case the simplicity of the Go code is not really related to the binary size.
The 10x LOC (despite being a huge exaggeration) is also the fixed cost, not the marginal cost. You're only forging main loop and includes, not any fundamental complexity.
This is also a funny argument coming from a Go programmer considering that Go trades off conciseness and expressivity for simplicity. Show me some of your favorite Go and I'm sure we can replace it with some concise C++.
I just physically shuddered