Backward Compatibility, Go 1.21, and Go 2
> That raises an obvious question: when should we expect the Go 2 specification that breaks old Go 1 programs?<p>> The answer is never. Go 2, in the sense of breaking with the past and no longer compiling old programs, is never going to happen. Go 2 in the sense of being the major revision of Go 1 we started toward in 2017 has already happened.<p>Why is backwards compatibility such a religious sin for Go? Python made it through a backwards-incompatible source change. I understand breaking backwards compatibility would be difficult on a short timescale, but on a long-term time scale people would migrate. Source rewriters would handle most of the transition. Over 3-5 years I could see a source-breaking change play out positively for some of these newer languages like Go and Rust. And arguably, they sorely need it.