I must say that whenever there is a discussion about the merits of the Go programming language, it really feels hostile in the discussion thread. It seems that people are seriously angry that others even consider using the language. It is sort of painful reading through the responses which implicitly declare that anybody who enjoys programming with Go is clueless.
It also really makes me wonder if I am living in some sort of alternate reality. I am a professional programmer working at a large company and I am pretty sure that 95% of my colleagues (myself included, as difficult as it is for me to admit) have no idea what a reified generic is. I have run into some problems where being able to define custom generic containers would be nice, but I don't feel like that has seriously hindered my ability to deliver safe, functional, and maintainable software.
What I appreciate most about Go is that I am sure that I can look at 99% of the Go code written in the world and I can understand it immediately. When maintaining large code bases with many developers of differing skill levels, this advantage can't be understated. That is the reason there are so many successful new programs popping up in Go with large open-source communities. It is because Go is accessible and friendly to people of varying skill levels, unlike most of the opinions expressed in this thread.