> When the author made the claim that Java was as fast as Go, I was a bit surprised. I wasn't aware Go had caught up to Java.

As a Go "fan": it hasn't. It's close in some things, faster in a few, but the JVM has years (and years) of performance tuning in it, and Go won't unequivocally beat Java for some time (if ever).

(This WiFi connection is failing me right now, but there's a good number of Go vs. Java benchmarks out there, for whatever benchmarks are worth)