> if you highly value language popularity; Go is not most popular

Go is similar to popular languages like C, JS/TS, & Python. And so, easy to get started.

> highly value a type system that catches errors

Probably these folks already use even less popular ML-style languages like OCaml & Haskell; or (comparatively) obscure ones like Agda, Idris, & rocq/Coq.

Or Rust, Swift, etc.