The GC and goroutines make it more abstracted from the metal than it looks, while lacking the conveniences of the zero-cost abstractions available in lower-level languages like Rust. The only upside of taking the opposite side of the Rust tradeoff is compile time.

> The only upside of taking the opposite side of the Rust tradeoff is compile time.

Not so, there are a few specialized domains where having tracing GC easily available is genuinely useful. (Pretty much anything having to do with general graphs - the sort of stuff you'd traditionally use LISP for!) Go is a great fit for these use cases.

It still gives me the feel of C, despite the abstractions (which I generally appreciate).

Rust is like something else entirely.

I've been slowly making my way through A Tour of Go and I really like what I've seen so far.

Funny. I looked through the GO book and walked away feeling justified in being diligent with C. Maybe that's because I dislike jumping through other peoples hoops when I know better.

Russ Cox articles do have that simple and defined quality of old days.