> Go 1.0 was released in 2013 (I don't even think the "official date" of March 28, 2012 is correct, or at least, nobody had heard of it).

This is a strange and ahistorical take. Go was heavily discussed in 2009 after it was first announced by Google. It didn't go four years between public announcement in 2009 and people finally learning of it in 2013.

Major themes of discussion in 2009: Does it have generics and if not, why not? How does it compare to Erlang? And why did they reuse the name from this language Go! we all just heard about five minutes ago? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=936544 - from the day after the language was publicly revealed.

The first two topics (generics and how it compares to Erlang) are still discussed today, though the former is now mostly complaining that it has generics instead of complaining that it doesn't have generics.