They just bundled some stuff into the language's CLI. This doesn't mean it somehow doesn't exist or that the language is any simpler.

No, but it does mean that mostly everybody uses the same thing and doesn't worry about it.

Node.js apps can be even easier than that (only two necessary commands): `npm install` for `go get` and `node [script.js]` for `go run`.

If you want to do compilation there are various solutions available to you as well!

Actually you have `npm run named-command` too so you could get a go like thing going.

The start and test scripts are special, and can be called directly.

For an idiomatic node app, you'd clone the repo, then type `npm install` to get the dependencies, `npm test` to make sure the tests pass, and then `npm start` to run it.