I'm not really involved in the Go community, but I've read a lot of arguments about it's lack of generics.

Here's a document I've found that summarizes the discussion- I thought it was a really interesting read given my lack of background in language design - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vrAy9gMpMoS3uaVphB32uVXX...

I don't know if I'd qualify the addition of Generics as a "minor change"

That's as far of a minor change as it can be.