Go advocacy tends to ignore what other modular languages with native compilers offer since the early 80's, as well as, present a cut down version of what modern runtimes are capable of.
If you read any posts or listen to any talks by Google's Go team, they are a fairly modest about Go. They know it isn't as fast as it could be (since they don't have decades of compiler optimizations yet that GCC or other compilers would give). As well, it's just a newer language. One thing a lot of people don't always realize is Golang started with the Plan9 C compiler[0]. So they actually generate all the way from source to machine code with their own compiler toolchain (no LLVM, GCC, or other compiler required).
When you look at the people coming to Go, most are coming from Python or Ruby, not C, C++, or Java. So a lot of the experience Go developers have are those other languages. As Rob Pike pointed out 2 years ago[1], while they set out for Go to replace C++, it ended up actually being a much better fit for Python and Ruby developers.
It's actually a really great fit for C# and Java developers too... C# guys like it because it's cross platform and they get to stop the madness of worrying about what version of the .Net platform is installed. It's also nice to have a single executable and not 100 dlls to deploy... no more need for an installer to do everything for you, just drop an executable.
I would imagine it's similar for the java guys, especially now that there's java 8, you start having to worry whether it's installed etc. I think Java is a harder sell, because most Java guys don't recognize the complexity inherent in their huge type systems, and they have all these new toys to play with in Java 8 without having to learn a whole new language.... I think they'll come around eventually, though.
Go happens to also be a really great alternative to C and C++ (at least in applications where you don't need the strict timing of a GC-less language...) It's much less error prone than C and C++, with memory safety making most truly critical security bugs simply impossible. Again, like the Java guys, it's a little hard to convince people that have been working in the language for 15-20+ years that there's something that can make their lives easier...
I didn't really know what eco-system you were talking about, so I looked at your comment history, from that I assume you're talking about Java.
So, I really didn't mean to denigrate any communities or languages, there's definitely nothing intrinsically wrong with Java, and the ecosystem is at least an order of magnitude larger than the one for Go. Java guys have probably the least reason to switch to Go of all the languages I mentioned. I can certainly understand why a Java dev would look at Go and wonder why anyone would ever choose it over Java.
Go isn't likely to beat many languages on features, since it was purposely designed to have fewer features than most other languages. I do think it offers some advantages over Java, but Java also offers some advantages over Go. It's not a contest. No one has to "win". There's a time and a place for nearly every language.
You got it almost right, I also do know C++ and .NET quite well. My fault for not expressing myself correctly.
However I find both your answers quite faire.
My pet peeve is more with younger developers that promote Go vs other languages, without knowing how rich they actually are. Or the alternatives that came before, lost in the mist of time, with similar features.
Nowadays I do find that Go is a good and safer alternative, for C programmers doing applications that can live with a GC.
For other backgrounds in languages with native compilers available, I guess we have to agree to disagree. :)
When you look at the people coming to Go, most are coming from Python or Ruby, not C, C++, or Java. So a lot of the experience Go developers have are those other languages. As Rob Pike pointed out 2 years ago[1], while they set out for Go to replace C++, it ended up actually being a much better fit for Python and Ruby developers.
[0] http://adventgo.blogspot.ca/2014/05/origin-of-go-toolchain.h...
[1] http://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2012/06/less-is-exponentia...