[sdenton4]

/Google decided their engineers aren't up to using more powerful tools./

I think you fundamentally misunderstand the reason for using Go. It's NOT about whether a developer is/isn't capable of understanding how to write code with a particular set of tools.

Instead, it's almost entirely about making that code simple to read and understand at a later date. Complex/'powerful' language tools complicate reading, which slows down later fixes and small modifications at best, and at worst leads to additional bugs in later iterations over the code. Thus, the core belief in Go's design is that 'powerful' languages are optimizing for entirely the wrong things.

From my perspective, this is a good change of focus. I want simple tools that I don't have to worry about. We have finite attention, so we should actively try to reduce cognitive load whenever possible, as it frees up attention for other things. For example, it's a much better use of my time to think about bayesian optimization than whether an array pointer is being safely handled... If I need to worry less about the latter, I have more time to think about the former.