I think the Go team probably wanted to avoid the mess that C++ has become, which to some extent has affected Scala as well. When a language tries to be all thin

I think the Go team probably wanted to avoid the mess that C++ has become, which to some extent has affected Scala as well. When a language tries to be all things to all people, it becomes cluttered and inconsistent. It can also become incompatible with previous versions in ways that prevent people from upgrading, as we have seen with Python 3. However, the Go team has gone further than most in their rejection of changes, and I think it's reached the point where it hurts the adoption of the language. When I write Go code, I feel like Rob Pike is standing behind me telling me to do things the way he likes them done, or not at all. There are plenty of examples of languages that have navigated this problem better than Go. Rust and Haskell come to mind immediately. C# and F# should also get more credit than they do for handling this kind of thing gracefully. Even Java 8 has incorporated many of the things people found attractive about Scala, without making them mandatory or alienating established developers.