The anecdote about writing the compiler in C is very interesting. LLVM is obviously very popular these days, so it’s refreshing to see a counter example. I also love that the compiler was decidedly mediocre. It just goes to show that often the user ((or developer) experience is typically more important than the technical merits of a product.
> It just goes to show that often the user ((or developer) experience is typically more important than the technical merits of a product.
I think Go still won on technical merits, because it never really competed with other compiled languages, instead mostly converting Python and Java programmers. Compared to those, startup time and memory usage of go programs are leagues ahead, and the quality of the codegen doesn't change that much.
