> When people say Go is a simple language, they mean that Go, the literal language, is simple.
Perhaps. But what use is a language that is simple if it doesn't make it simpler to use or easier to learn? I think most people who claim that Go is simple are claiming the latter, because the former is mostly uninteresting. It's good for IDE support I guess.
Pencil is a simpler medium than oil paints, but that doesn't make it any easier to do a good portrait with it. Saying its a simple language is expressing a trait of the language that some people may like or find they have an affinity for. People seem to get stuck with the idea that programming languages can only be compared via objective criteria where as we seem to use these sorts of signals to help each other find mediums we like.
It's a tradeoff. You get a simple language without a lot of surprising features, but sometimes code is very verbose; sometimes problems that would be trivial in other languages require unfortunate solutions like cgo, reflection, strange hacks[0], or code generation; and sometimes the "sensible" opinionated ecosystem doesn't fit how you want to work.
Perhaps. But what use is a language that is simple if it doesn't make it simpler to use or easier to learn? I think most people who claim that Go is simple are claiming the latter, because the former is mostly uninteresting. It's good for IDE support I guess.