[slantview]

I used to use Ruby for CLIs. Then I started using Golang and delivering compiled binaries for each OS that I supported. This has been a game changer for me. With the CLIs that I've worked on that are open source https://github.com/RiotGamesMinions/motherbrain and some other ones in Ruby, we consistently had issues with rubygems and having people be able to run our CLI from version to version.

Using something like Golang for distributing compiled binaries means that as long as they have the CLI, it will continue to work. With Ruby, Python, PHP, etc, there is absolutely no guarantee that your application will work in the future.

[sotojuan]

I'm not a Go user but I agree. While I make Node CLIs for myself because I'm very quick with JavaScript, I'd choose Go if I was making something for a lot of people!

[yannis]

Go has been a game changer for me also. There is also a very good package https://github.com/spf13/cobra that can make the development of complex CLIs easier.

[aikah]

Go default flag package is pure garbage though. That's a fact. However, Go cross compilation makes it easy to develop multi-os CLI tools. The downside is the size of the executable, it's easy to reach the 50MB bar with Go binaries.