That's true, but Go's backwards compatibility is a side-effect of another design goal, one that many contemporary languages do not share: Keeping the language s

That's true, but Go's backwards compatibility is a side-effect of another design goal, one that many contemporary languages do not share: Keeping the language small and stable, and actively trying not to add shiny new features. Many languages have pretty good or even excellent backwarsds compatibility. In languages that incude as many features as possible, that quickly becomes a burden that requires it's own fair share of developer attention.