> Remember there already is a mature C compiler alternative for Go: gccgo. There's also already a first-party LLVM based Go toolchain created by Google (gollvm). Whatever hypothetical benefits you might presume would emerge from this kind of synergy already exist. But the community mostly isn't interested.

I suspect the community is uninterested because it’s hard to be interested in compilers that a) compile slower than gc, and b) produce slower code than gc. That's a worse compiler on all fronts!

For gccgo or gollvm to be useful, they need to provide some benefit. I suspect we'll see (b) fixed within a year. GCC/LLVM have far more optimizations than gc, and so it's mostly a matter of plumbing enough information from the Go frontend into the LLVM optimizer to unleash its full power.

I don't expect we'll see (a) fixed, unless something changes at Google.

> Also, Google also already invests a massive amount of resource into LLVM. In fact, the principal author of LLVM and Clang works at Google. But even when he was at Apple they were already shoveling resource into the project.

Yes, but Chris Lattner is not actively working on speeding up LLVM. His big project lately has been supporting TensorFlow via MLIR.

> You agree and then again go completely sideways by unreasonably expecting that Go team to contribute to stack they neither claim to be expert on, nor particularly like it.

Sorry, but I think you’re still missing my point. It’s well documented that the original creators of Go did not want to build their language on top of LLVM, and did not like C++. That’s totally fine! Of course you have to work on things you like.

But Go is so stable, and has been for more than half a decade. That means Google could spin up a brand new team, entirely separate if they must, of folks who like both LLVM and Go, to build out an LLVM frontend for Go. It’s not like Go is a fast-moving target. There is a very stable spec.

Gccgo is proof that it is possible to have a GCC frontend for Go without too much work. Ian Taylor has been maintaining Gccgo for about ten years, working what seems to be half time. Imagine what could be done if there were a few more folks actively working on improving gccgo, rather than just keeping parity with gc.

> I do not see how a generic framework could be made as fast as custom build stack.

I don’t see why not. It’s mostly a matter of introducing ways of disabling the expensive bits when compiling/linking a simpler language like Go. Yes, it’s probably somewhat slower to develop, but everyone benefits from the work, and you also offload much of the burden of maintaining a compiler/linker for a half dozen different platforms to the LLVM team collectively.