“Our original goal was not to create a new programming language, it was to create a better way to write software.”
Pike lists the wins: gofmt, the compatibility promise, cross-compilation, a real standard library. Then the losses: package management, a decade-long generics fight, and a team that talked past its own community. Go shipped in 2009 without a real answer for dependencies. Google had the money to eat that mistake, and everyone maintaining GOPATH hacks paid for it.