A really helpful answer in this case would include the story behind why the Go creators decided to use a different operator. Linking to the entire spec (not just the relevant section on arithmetic operators) is not friendly, patient or welcoming.
Rob Pike is pretty busy too, but he appears to be much friendlier in his responses (even to newbie questions).
I'll probe once more, since you totally ignored the question: did you run that test program through the compiler? The result is evidence of magnitudes more friendliness than anything that anyone could possibly write in a comment.
Imagine asking somebody if the sky is blue and then instead of getting a simple "Yes" answer you get a piece of source code you need to compile and run to see that "Yes".
rsc wrote a lot of the Ms.
And the answer rsc gave was charmingly funny and helpful. Did you try following rsc's advice? I won't post a spoiler here; It's awesome and way better than "hey, we use ^ instead of ~ for that".
The problem so often is that people who can't keep up and don't understand how good the answers are, blame the experts for going too fast, and mistake "being too busy to handhold 1000s of people" for "being a jerk".
Would you go to Yankee Stadium and stop Derek Jeter on the way into work, just to ask him "Hey, does Major League Baseball use metal bats, or wooden bats?"