Grant, if we edited Fortran, I assume that you'd put a column thing in there.
Compilers resemble gluttonous eaters who devour excessive quantities of healthy food just to excrete them as refuse.
Developing a compiler was a logical move; but in matters like this, you don't run against logic - you run against people who can't change their minds.
At least for the people who send me mail about a new language that they're designing, the general advice is: do it to learn about how to write a compiler.
I had a running compiler and nobody would touch it. They told me computers could only do arithmetic.
Real programmers can write assembly code in any language.
Computer language design is just like a stroll in the park. Jurassic Park, that is.
Any good software engineer will tell you that a compiler and an interpreter are interchangeable.
Go is an attempt to combine the safety and performance of statically typed languages with the convenience and fun of dynamically typed interpretative languages.
Trying to outsmart a compiler defeats much of the purpose of using one.
Java the language is almost irrelevant. It's the design of the Java Virtual Machine. And I've seen compilers for ML, compilers for Scheme, compilers for Ada, and they all work. Not many people use them, but it doesn't matter: they all work.
