You're right, compiler speed isn't the reason it seems fast, not
really. That wasn't an explicit goal. There is a lot of misinformation
about compiler speed and Go's design.
The compiler isn't actually all that fast. I mean, it's OK, but it's
not superb, and it has slowed down significantly since the early days.
Compared to some other languages it may be a faster compiler, but
that's a tough comparison because of the next paragraph. And it's
certainly slower than some languages' too. (It wasn't designed to be
slow, either, but let's not go there.)
The real reason Go seems to compile quickly compared to other
languages is that we worried a lot about build time. Not compile time,
build time. Minimizing I/O during compilation, efficient algorithms
(due to efficient design) for package resolution. Having only one
source file for each item, as opposed to a .c and a .h for example, or
a separate types description file. Folding dependency information into
.o files. And so on.
I talked about these design details at length in
https://talks.golang.org/2012/splash.article.
-rob
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