If I had to do a server-side project for money I’d probably pick Go again. I don’t have to like the language to recognize it’s a good tool for the job – I’d gripe about it, but I’d use it anyhow. Can’t stand the server side Javascript ecosystem, the Java ecosystem (including Scala etc) is good but nowhere near as easy to deal with as Go’s, Erlang / Elixir seems decent but it’s a bit alien to me because I’ve not written anything in either beyond just hobby stuff to learn the languages and the concepts.

Pony is what I’d actually prefer using for work projects but it’s so niche and its ecosystem isn’t exactly vibrant that it wouldn’t be a great choice. As a language it gets a ton of stuff right though, and I vastly prefer its memory safety model (reference capabilities) over what eg. Rust or Swift do, it’s just much easier to reason with for me – although it’s not an easy language to learn as such because the ref cap model does force you to think very differently about things. Its actor model is great too; the fact that it makes guarantees about message delivery order makes it a lot easier to reason with.