Is it me or is this substantially uglier than the C version?
I don't think it would be that ugly if you compared it C code that didn't include windows.h
Whatever, native GUI bindings has been a key factor for the adoption (or lack thereof) of some languages where they would have otherwise been perfectly fine.
after a while things will settle down and this "hello world" program will boil down to something much simpler, like:
import "win"
func PopWin(text string) {
win.NewWindow(text, ...)
}
also keep in mind that this is the version that purposely avoids using C and, as a consequence, can be cross compiled for windows on every machine with Go installed. there are benefits to that.