One of the original intents of go was to make a static, compiled language that felt familiar to python/ruby programers. This manifests as a really concise syntax (type inference via := etc) and a tight development loop enabled by fast compilation times (enabled by being strict about unused dependencies etc).

I was for a time optimistic you could use it as your scripting language without much downside and get all the upside of compiled static types. Rust looks cool and I want to do a project in it at some point but at the moment I'm most optimistic about python with optional type annotations that are understood by compilers and alternative runtimes.