> optimized for junior programmers to write babby's first enterprise
This is the (toxic) attitude Go strives to distance itself from. There is no magic, we can all be equals in this place. It's humbling. I'm not aware of any other mainstream project that captures this essence so well.
There is power in a language equalizing things. If you aspire to wring elegance out of complex or esoteric language features then by all means have fun with that but I have no interest in working with you on that. Your definition of pain could not possibly be more diametrically opposed to mine.
...in the Harrison Bergeron sense.
The fact that Rust has attracted relatively inexperienced coders to do bare-metal, real-time programming shows that you don't need to nerf the language in order to appeal to interested developers of all skill levels.
It's the junior engineers that most often struggle with trying to devise a way to use every language feature under the sun when solving a problem, not the other way around.
Using Go as a PHP alternative is pretty much the use case most aligned with its niche. So go nuts if you like doing that. But stray too far from that use case and Go will start to provide pain without adequate justification, especially when compared against Zig, Rust, or even TypeScript.