That is the greatest possible defence of golang's current course and heading, and god knows I want as much of my world to build from source as possible, but >

That is the greatest possible defence of golang's current course and heading, and god knows I want as much of my world to build from source as possible, but > sure, you can just pretend the source is an IR (but if some library you use chooses a different build tool chain than you, you're going to have a bad time In the jvm world right now, for example, I won't touch maven with a ten foot poll. And yet I regularly use libraries produced by people who do. The portable, stable bytecode is a boundary between me and them where the buck stops. Anyone can use any build toolchain they like, and the interface for collaboration is well-defined. Don't get me wrong, there are many things to love about golang, and there are many things to love about building from source. But I do think it's worth pausing to consider the flexibility that an intermediate representation can unlock.