Longer version:

- I've been writing almost exclusively Go code as my full time job for the last 2.5 years

- I've coded in Python and PHP full time before - each at least as long as Go (and neither of them was my first or second programming language)

- I was able to pick up Go significantly faster than either of the two (0 to push to production in less than 2 weeks)

- I'm at least as productive (measured in problems solved / features delivered in unit of time) in Go as I was in Python

- standard library is great and very often replaces the need for 3rd party libraries (performant, production ready HTTP server for example) and makes dependencies "flatter"

- deployment of a single static binary vs virtualenv hell (pre-docker) is bliss

- it's actually very fast for free - you'll start worrying about (and start spending time on) performance way later

Negatives: - dependency management is bad

From web app/api perspective:

- just using http server from standard library gives you concurency go is known for - each request is a goroutine which is cheap: minimal overhead

- you can delay worring about performance (at least from the app part - not db obviously) more. It's easier to throw hardware at the problem when you need 1/10 of the hardware

- deployment is easy - single static binary that just works

- multiple CPU cores are simply used: you don't have to run multiple processes (node)

- http server in standard library is production ready: no need to stick it behind something else

- you get all that without sacrificing productivity