apt-cyg/go

Why Go?

Consider this Python script

print("Hello world")

You can compile it for Windows like this

build_exe --bundle-files 0 --compress --optimize hello.py
upx -9 hello.exe

and it comes out to 4.16 MB. Now consider this Go script

package main
import "fmt"
func main() {
	fmt.Println("Hello world")
}

You can compile it like this

go build -ldflags -s hello.go
upx -9 hello.exe

and it comes out to 375 KB. Something else to consider is that Python is built with Visual C++ 2010. That means that the program you create will not work on Windows 7 for example unless the user has installed Visual C++ 2010. Go is built with Visual C++ 6, this means that any programs created with Go will work on Windows 7 as is.