[ralph]

The Go developers have said they deliberately didn't try and write Go in Go because they've done that with other languages, possibly Alef, I forget, and a bug can arise where the fix is obvious if it wasn't that the bug exists and would be triggered by the fix. Instead, a more awkward fix has to be figured out that doesn't trigger the bug. Of course, once the bug is fixed the original straightforward fix can be substituted but it's all unwanted hassle.

[gizmo686]

How often does this come up? Under normal circumstances, wouldn't you be able to revert to a version of the compiler from before the bug was introduced? If your still in initial development, then you have the old, foreign, compiler to fall back on.

[ralph]

Seemingly often enough that it deterred them with Go. No, you may not be able to revert to before the bug was introduced as it may be the bug was there ever since that feature was added. As soon as it is self-hosted, the old compiler becomes quickly irrelevant, i.e. the code rapidly diverts from what it can compile.