Every nil panic and manual type assertion holds a potentially very nice language back. They just seem like relics we should abandon.
It’s a simple language with simple, explicit, verbose, tedious, pedantic patterns. The communication resulting from those patterns is where the value lies for a lot of developers and teams.
In general I agree that it does lead to code that's more familiar even if it was written by someone else. Having only used it a few months now, I can definitely see where the value in go lies.