I want to learn Go just because I like the mascot. How could anyone not respect this little guy? 😛

From Wikipedia:

Go originated as an experiment by Google engineers Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, and Ken Thompson to design a new programming language that would resolve common criticisms of other languages while maintaining their positive characteristics. The developers envisaged the new language as:

• statically typed, scalable to large systems (as Java and C++)
• productive and readable, without too many mandatory keywords and repetition^[21] (“light on the page” like dynamic languages)
• not requiring integrated development environments, but supporting them well
• supporting networking and multiprocessing