[travisd]

Go generally is pretty conservative about that kind of thing (namely, compiler optimizations). Go generally abides by a “what you write is what you get” kind of thing, especially when it comes to “non-local” optimizations. It’s generally opposed to anything that’s “clever.” (Just my feeling as someone who uses Go pretty often and who respects the choice they’ve made on that spectrum).

[perfmode]

it’s actually to keep compile times fast

and for the implementation of the compiler to remain simple

[travisd]

Yep, I think those things are all related.

[pjmlp]

The first one is doable in more complex languages, e.g. D, Ada, Delphi,...