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Comment by pidgeon_lover

2 days ago

Windows 7 support is one reason to stick to older GoLang releases. A project in Go 1.21.4 or earlier will work on every Windows release and any computer made since 2009, whereas a version bump to v1.21.5 means it will only work on more recent computers and Win10 and 11 for no benefit.

https://github.com/golang/go/issues/64622

I think this is a reasonable take. Yes, people shouldn't be running Windows 7 as their daily driver. But if you can support it at basically no effort and without sacrifices that is the right thing to do. Supporting more platforms is a good thing, even if that platform is an old Windows version instead of an Amiga

  • > and without sacrifices

    There are always trade-offs/sacrifices.

    The Go team isn't making new versions just for fun. Each version since 1.21 has had improvements. Especially the fix/change to for loop variables in 1.22 is very nice to have, and helps preventing to write bugs.

    If there's a reasonable expectation that users will use outdated platforms, it makes sense to support them. If there is no such expectation at all, why would one forego the improvements to the language and tooling.

    There's always a price to pay.