Tried out golang, and I personally don’t like the language at all. Thoughts:

• Fast compile to native, with static types and GC - awesome.
• Lack of collection API, global functions - lackluster.
• Pointers, errorcodes, no extension functions, no compiler-verifiable “implements” contract, no function blocks - dealbreaker.

Go feels too low-level for my tastes, especially the strange decision of still having to deal with the pointers.

Go has exceptions, however I really don’t understand the recommendation to still use error-codes for library APIs. I think that the exception mechanism is vastly superior to error-codes and shrinks the code base by 40% by removing the following lines: if(result != 0) return 1. If the language has a proper GC and exceptions, using error-codes is just dumb.

Missing collection API is a huge slap-in-the-face - having to deal with global functions to use arrays is unacceptable.

Would I prefer golang over C and C++? Definitely.

Over Kotlin-native? That’s a toughie. Kotlin is IMHO far better language than golang, but kotlin-native on arm64 is severely crippled. So, if I’d target x86 then Kotlin definitely; if not, well, I’ve heard that okio works on arm64 these days…

I’d definitely go Swift over Go: even though Swift only has reference counting as opposed to full GC, I like Swift’s language much more than Go’s.

Also, am I the only one who thinks that the Go mascot looks retarded?