[ayrx]

I really don't see how PyPy is "splitting the user base" when you have to make close to no changes to your code to gain an appreciable speedup in 90% of the cases.

I see many people compare Python to Go and frankly? Go isn't nearly as nice to work with as Python (no exceptions? one among many small but noticeable annoyances). It's much nicer than C or C++ in cases where you require the raw performance but it isn't a replacement for Python.

There are also many areas where performance is literally of zero consideration (small scripts to automate stuff) and those areas are where Python is hard to beat.

[Zancarius]

I think the problem with Go coming from Python is that the paradigm shift is a lot more substantial than it appears at first blush. My experience was quite the opposite: Go is pleasant to write in, exceptionally simple, and once you fully grok (and appreciate) slices and channels, the expressiveness of the language starts to take a life of its own. I never missed exceptions much (again, because you have to completely accept Go for what it is) and the fact the language specification is so short makes it easy to understand and relatively fast to pick up. Plus it's fast.

My problem with Go has nothing to do with the language per se. Instead, my reservations fall mostly on the ecosystem. It's immature and compared to more established languages like Python, it isn't nearly as rich (after all, it isn't as old). I gather from reading the mailing list archives off and on that there's been some inertial resistance toward certain frameworks (I can't really fault anyone for this--Martini and Revel have too much "magic," for example), and in some cases, prospective users are advised to "roll your own" if it's not something in the standard library. But when it comes to certain odds and ends, it's just downright difficult at times to find something that works as well as its Python counterpart out of the box and is relatively API stable (blackfriday, the Markdown parser, comes to mind--but then I guess offloading that to the client using JS might be better these days?).

Also, the abuse of the word "idiomatic" grates on me a little. There was someone on HN a number of months back who joked (paraphrasing) "Great, we're going to see 'idiomatic' abused as much as 'pythonic' and 'pivot.'"

But, that's why I do agree with you: Sometimes performance doesn't matter quite as much as the ability to avoid "not invented here." And Python has libraries for almost everything--SQLAlchemy is probably one of Python's "killer apps." (I expect Go will progress there, one day, but for some use cases it's not quite at that point in my experience--so the answer is probably to contribute to those Go libraries/projects you find of use.)