The context of that paragraph though shows an understanding of the entire scale of the development spectrum and was one of the most credible arguments that peaked my interest in his reasoning. I have to say, this was the most convincing argument I have read on going to Go and concurrency is very important. I saw that line more as a joking punchline.
I am in the same Python to Node.js transition recently but still do lots of Python, but new projects are Node.js more and more. I might dig into Go again some more. The reason I think Node.js is still nicer, at least for now, is it mimics the package scale of Python in that there is a package for everything. A platform is all about the packages after the language/tools.
I got that he was joking a bit, but since he never mentioned Erlang again, and he wanted something good at doing concurrent programming, it seemed a bit "hah, hah, only serious". There are plenty of good things about Go, so I'm sure it's a fine language for what he is doing, but I was wondering why Erlang was never heard from again.
I see, yes Erlang really did revive the concurrency focus. But I also think that the syntax is a major hurdle to widespread adoption. Mochimedia did some cool stuff with Mochiweb in Erlang. Indeed though, you really shouldn't brush over Erlang when talking concurrency as your main feature to decide on. But he is right, syntax will hold it back, where Go doesn't really have that problem as much. We have all experienced the tab push back on Python, dial that up on Erlang.
"insane Erlang programmers who are content writing sumerian cuneiform all day long"
Seems kind of equivalent to: "no, I never looked at Python - I heard it uses white space".