The true is that I had never been so productive writing code. The friction from what is in your head and the code is almost 0.
It is true that I ended writing a few functions that were there only because the lack of generics, the type system and other stuff being "built-in". But at the end, I think it was an order of magnitude less often than I was expecting it to. I was wrong.
But I think that the "friction from what is in your head to code" probably betrays that you weren't settled in a previous language? I only say this because I have zero friction writing C++, and have to think mildly backwards when it comes to C# or Java, and definitely Objective-C. Even PHP is like simplified C++ to me, so I write everything like it is a dumbed-down dialect of C++.
I suppose it is just what some people find comfortable.
I had the same feeling as the user you're answering to. And I have used quite a bunch of languages I've been quite productive with (C, C++, PHP, Python, Java, Ada), but I've never felt with these languages as little "friction" as with Go.
I mean, that language is so dumb that you don't have to think about the right way to do stuff. It's obvious. Boring, sometimes verbose, but obvious. It doesn't stand in the way between me and the problem.
* Transforming a collection means doing boring for loops instead of one-liners. * interfaces/duck typing is great. But hey, []interface{} does not fit into interface{}. * Structs with fields are encouraged, but there is no uniform Uniform access principle and that sucks. * etc
But definitely, my own "science" confirms that it turned to be out less of a problem (for my own usage) compared to better languages with more friction.
I am not only talking about the strict compile checks. I am talking about that extra thinking in the ten ways you can design it and how it should be done in "proper" Rust.
And the friction is not only in the language, but also in the standard library. A language that comes with XML/json marshal/unmarshal plus a quite decent http client/server framework covers most of what I need to do.
I am sure if Rust had included in the standard package http/xml/json it would be far more popular. I understand the voices that say "It does not belong there", "the language is not targeted at that". Fine. But then I found myself having not much user for the language, even if I loved the idea/theory behind it, plus that I could not get comfortable thinking in it.