As a person who was initially disappointed by Go and who has come to love it, one of the biggest things I learned from watching it grow was the following:
As far as languages go, Go is relatively well-funded. You can of course imagine hypotheticals where there was more money behind it, but on the spectrum of PLs it's got more support than most. And further, I think the core developers who work on it like rsc and bradfitz are objectively great implementers. Despite that, the majority of complaints about Go are a lack of language features; you even see some in this thread.
In other words, a language with an above-average amount of effort and ability and 14 years behind it is still perceived as feature poor. But imagine how much more time it would have taken if they had taken on a larger scope, like if they had gone through all the complex design process for generics up front.
For me it is a great lesson on how important reducing scope is for shipping, and also how a reduced scope enables you to more judiciously choose what is important. If they had decided that features X, Y, Z were table stakes for their launch they would never have had the time to do the other things that I think have made Go great.
As far as languages go, Go is relatively well-funded. You can of course imagine hypotheticals where there was more money behind it, but on the spectrum of PLs it's got more support than most. And further, I think the core developers who work on it like rsc and bradfitz are objectively great implementers. Despite that, the majority of complaints about Go are a lack of language features; you even see some in this thread.
In other words, a language with an above-average amount of effort and ability and 14 years behind it is still perceived as feature poor. But imagine how much more time it would have taken if they had taken on a larger scope, like if they had gone through all the complex design process for generics up front.
For me it is a great lesson on how important reducing scope is for shipping, and also how a reduced scope enables you to more judiciously choose what is important. If they had decided that features X, Y, Z were table stakes for their launch they would never have had the time to do the other things that I think have made Go great.