&gt; If Go is bad, why is it so popular? The cognitive dissonance is particularly difficult to contend with this time around.<p>&gt; It was developed at the largest internet company on earth by some of the most accomplished programmers in history.<p>Paradox answered.<p>New languages are developed almost daily; as hobbies, by students, by academics and so forth. Most of them you&#x27;ve never heard of, will never take the time to look at, because you don&#x27;t know what gains the language can bring and spending hours reading the research that went into it aren&#x27;t worth it until you do. Particularly if the new language introduces something <i>new</i>, which requires you to actually learn something, rather than reimagine something you already know in a different way.<p>But, if you see that someone famous wrote the paper, it might be worth a read, because they have a reputation, and the no-names who write the other languages every day do not have celebrity status yet.<p>And it only takes a few of those who are curious enough to read it, to break it down into small bits and publish in a blog what benefits other people might get from using it, which will trigger a wider adoption of people learning.<p>The argument &quot;that everyone is stupid&quot;, is what many in the programming community are willing to do, because how many of the other 364 programming languages developed this year did all of the Go enthusiasts read about before jumping on the bandwagon?