[twblalock]

The C programmers whom I know don't like Go because it doesn't have pointer arithmetic, and the runtime does some "magic" stuff like the goroutines. A lot of C programmers don't really like encapsulation as much as people who are used to object-oriented languages.

C++ and Java programmers see Go as an intentionally crippled language without inheritance or generics, which they can't quite wrap their heads around. Java programmers have a very hard time accepting the lack of dependency versioning, and the Go team's insistence that it is not important is mind-boggling to anyone who has been using Maven for years.

Ruby and Python programmers see Go as a step back in usability and syntax, and those who have not used a statically-typed language see a lot of boilerplate.

On top of all of that, any of the aforementioned ecosystems have a large set of libraries that are widely known and standard in the industry.

I like Go, and I think most programmers would like it if they gave it a chance, but I think it challenges too many peoples' preconceptions. Compare that to Scala, which you can sell as "better Java" and get people on board immediately.