iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 26/09/2026

New interactive mini-book: Go concurrency distilled It gives a brief overview of many concurrency topics in Go, along with examples you can run in the browser. There's also a PDF version. The book is AI-free. antonz.org/go-concurren...

antonz.org

Go concurrency distilled

Interactive mini-book on concurrent programming in Go.

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Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 12/09/2026

Solod v0.4 is out! It's a system-level language with Go syntax, zero runtime, and fast C interop. The new release ships an automatic C bindings generator, freestanding mode for most of the standard library, and even some Windows support 😅 antonz.org/solod-0.4

antonz.org

Solod 0.4: Better C interop

A strict subset of Go that translates to regular C.

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Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 02/09/2026

This esteemed function in Go's standard library reads the mantissa and exponent from a string and returns seven individual values. I guess someone really hated structs, huh 🫠

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Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 31/08/2026

This Go expression is a bit unconventional, but it's completely valid: error.Error(errors.ErrUnsupported) "errors.ErrUnsupported" is a real, though less well-known, error value defined in the errors package. "error" is a real interface type, and "Error" is its method.

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Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 29/08/2026

I have no idea why developers hate examples so much. Sometimes, I'll see a Go proposal discussion with 50 comments where people argue back and forth, but no one gives a single example about what they're talking about. These discussions go nowhere because no one really knows what the others mean.

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Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 27/08/2026

I've updated the "Go features by version" list with the latest changes from 1.27. This is not a replacement for release notes, but rather a quick summary of major features in any given Go version. antonz.org/go-features/...

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Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 26/08/2026

One of Solod's strengths is its zero-overhead C interop. So I took a break from working on the standard library and made a tool that generates Solod bindings for any C library from its headers. To get started, I also created bindings for some popular C libraries like Raylib, Sodium, and SQLite.

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Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 25/08/2026

The new JSON package is finally production-ready in Go 1.27, so I've updated my JSON v2 guide. It explains all the main differences between the json and json/v2 packages, with interactive examples for each one. Check it out! antonz.org/go-json-v2

antonz.org

JSON evolution in Go: from v1 to v2

Reviewing the key changes in json/v2.

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Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 24/08/2026

Postgres 19 introduces native graph queries (following the SQL/PGQ spec — Property Graph Queries). It's currently in beta, but if you want to try the graphs feature, I've set up an online playground: codapi.org/embed/?sandb...

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Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 22/08/2026

I compiled a Solod program that imports 30 stdlib packages to WebAssembly and did the same with Go and TinyGo. Solod's binary is 2x smaller than TinyGo's and 16x smaller than Go's 😎 All three binaries are fully self-contained (WASIp1).

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Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 20/08/2026

Building a freestanding standard library isn't something you can do in one afternoon, but it's still quite feasible. Here's the approach I used: antonz.org/going-freest...

antonz.org

Going freestanding

Porting Go's standard library to platform-agnostic C.

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Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 17/08/2026

The goroutine leak detector will become generally available in Go 1.27. But did you know you can also use synctest (Go 1.25+) to catch goroutine leaks in tests? See how the two approaches compare: antonz.org/detecting-go...

antonz.org

Detecting goroutine leaks with synctest/pprof

Explore different types of leaks and how to detect them in modern Go versions.

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Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 13/08/2026

Running the full Solod stdlib test suite takes 5 seconds (Clang on macOS). It's not as fast as a Go test suite of roughly the same size, but it's still fast enough to provide useful feedback while making changes.

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Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 10/08/2026

I expect the "javafication" of the Go ecosystem to continue with the addition of generic methods in Go 1.27. We probably won't see unnecessary generic abstractions in the standard library, but plenty of third-party code will gladly take advantage of this wonderful opportunity.

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Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 09/08/2026

Everyone is creating a new programming language these days, often one that's "like Go but with more features" or "like Rust but simpler". Solod, a systems language for C and Go developers, might look like one of those languages. But it takes a different approach.

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Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 07/08/2026

Cryptography is one of Go's underrated strengths. The standard library includes many cryptographic algorithms. They're all well-written, well-documented, reasonably concise, and thoroughly audited. Some of them are also very fast!

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Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 06/08/2026

Solod now has a logo ☀️ I hope it helps the language really shine :)

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Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 05/08/2026

I'm starting to port Go's hashing packages to Solod (a subset of Go that translates to C). At first, I thought about porting MD5, but who actually uses it anymore? So I went with SHA-2 instead.

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Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 03/08/2026

One perfectly reasonable design decision after another. antonz.org/going-backward

antonz.org

Going Backward

Reinventing the generic iterator wheel.

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Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 27/07/2026

When I stopped writing interactive release notes for Go, I immediately started making them for Solod, the language I'm working on. I guess I just can't stop writing interactive notes 🤔

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Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 25/07/2026

Solod v0.3 is out! It's a system-level language with Go syntax, zero runtime, and fast C interop. The new release ships concurrency, JSON support, testing and benchmarking tools, and a wider safety net (escape analysis, leak checking, stack traces). antonz.org/solod-0.3

antonz.org

Solod 0.3: Concurrency, JSON, more safety

A strict subset of Go that translates to regular C.

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Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 22/07/2026

Adding concurrency to Solod (a subset of Go that translates to C) felt great. But my favorite feature in the upcoming release is preventing the most common kind of dangling pointer: returning a pointer to a local variable from a function.

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Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 21/07/2026

Go has 18 built-in functions (since Go 1.21; there were 15 before that). Personally, I use make, append and len all the time. I never use complex/real/imag or print/println. Everything else falls in between. How about you?

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Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 20/07/2026

I've put together my own crazy language ranking based on the number of sandbox runs in the Codapi playgrounds. As you can see, Lua is number one, Odin is more popular than C#, and Zig is more popular than C — which obviously doesn't quite reflect the reality 😅

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Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 16/07/2026

My Go Concurrency book is now available on Amazon: amazon.com/dp/B0H94S2G4K And, of course, it's still free to read on my website: antonz.org/go-concurrency With interactive examples!

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Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 15/07/2026

The entire Solod language implementation is under 5,000 lines of Go code, plus 700 lines of C built-ins and another 700 lines for tooling. This is only possible because Go's stdlib offers a great lexer and parser, along with a ready-made analysis package in x/tools.

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Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 13/07/2026

I don't like the functional options pattern in Go, and I'm pretty disappointed that it ended up in the standard library with the new json/v2 package. An honest, plain Options struct is much better.

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Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 11/07/2026

Saying goodbye to interactive Go tours: antonz.org/on-go-tours

antonz.org

On interactive Go tours

Wrapping up the series.

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Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 10/07/2026

Can you match the state-of-the-art Go concurrency model using POSIX threads? Of course not. But what exactly is the difference, and how can you narrow the gap? Here's my take. antonz.org/concurrency-...

antonz.org

Go-flavored concurrency in C

Worker pools, channels, and mutexes - backed by pthreads.

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Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 05/07/2026

You might not remember, but one of the reasons Go was appreciated in the early 2010s was that it came with great tooling right out of the box, specifically for testing and benchmarking. Now Solod (a subset of Go that translates to C) is getting a testing tool too!

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Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 02/07/2026

Solod (a subset of Go that translates to C) is getting a concurrency model. Instead of Go's M:N goroutine scheduler, it uses an M:N thread worker pool with a task queue. Much simpler, but still pretty efficient.

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Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 26/06/2026

Solod v0.2 is out! It's a system-level language with Go syntax, zero runtime, and a familiar standard library. The new release ships networking, UUIDs, WebAssembly, and a freestanding mode. antonz.org/solod-v0-2

antonz.org

Solod v0.2: Networking, new targets, friendlier interop

A system-level language with Go syntax and a familiar standard library.

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Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 14/06/2026

Big day today! Solod (a subset of Go that translates to C) now comes with a networking package. It's pretty basic, but it's still an important step.

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Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 31/05/2026

As you probably know, UUIDs — v4 and v7 — are finally coming to the Go standard library this summer! I decided to port them to Solod (a subset of Go that translates to C) right away. I also added the Version method, which the Go team chose to leave out.

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Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 12/05/2026

Solod (a subset of Go that translates to C) now has a freestanding mode. Many standard library packages work fine without needing libc: bytes, strings, slices, maps, mem, math/bits, and utf8. Even the time package mostly works!

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Reposted by Anton Zhiyanov

Josh Baker @tidwall.bsky.social · 10/05/2026

After many months of planning and development, here it is. Introducing btype. B-tree based collection types for Go. It's hand-crafted to be faster than the current B-trees for Go, Rust, and C++. github.com/tidwall/btype

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Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 09/05/2026

Adding WebAssembly support to Solod (a subset of Go that translates to C) was a breeze. I especially like the size of the resulting .wasm file: — Go: 1.7MB — TinyGo: 111KB — Solod: 9.5KB Who's tiny now, huh? 😁

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Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 06/05/2026

Solod v0.1 is out! Go syntax, zero runtime, native C interop — now with a practical stdlib and a bunch of example applications. antonz.org/solod-v0-1

antonz.org

Solod v0.1: Go ergonomics, practical stdlib, native C interop

A system-level language with Go syntax and zero runtime.

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Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 02/05/2026

Many new programming languages lack practical examples. I don't want to make the same mistake. More apps are coming soon 💪

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Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 01/05/2026

Now a clanker can write Solod code for you. But where's the fun in that?

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Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 25/04/2026

Every day, Solod (a subset of Go that translates to C) gets closer to its first official release. Only two stdlib packages left to port — filepath and flag!

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Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 16/04/2026

I've been fascinated by RISC-V lately. An open-source processor architecture is a great idea. I hope we'll see a lot more consumer devices and servers using RISC-V chips in the coming years. In the meantime, I've added support for linux/riscv64 to Solod (a subset of Go that translates to C).

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Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 14/04/2026

When Go introduced iterators in 1.23, they essentially standardized the "callback approach" to iteration, which was already used in some parts of the standard library, such as sync․Map and fs.WalkDir. I actively dislike it.

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Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 11/04/2026

Made a small progress bar for the first release of Solod (a subset of Go that translates to C). Not quite there yet, but a lot of work is already done!

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Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 06/04/2026

When I designed Solod (a subset of Go that translates to C), I set a strict rule: no heap allocations in the language or built-ins (only in the standard library). That meant no built-in maps.

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Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 05/04/2026

Maps are essential in application development. But Go's stdlib uses maps very cautiously. I've ported a dozen core Go packages to C so far and have encountered a map only a couple of times. The fewer maps, the better!

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Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 03/04/2026

Can a C port of the Go stdlib be faster than the original? I was able to get a 2-4x speed boost with strings.Builder, but couldn't beat Go's substring search. On porting, benchmarks, and optimization: antonz.org/porting-go-s...

antonz.org

Porting Go's strings package to C

With allocators, benchmarks, and some optimizations.

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Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 01/04/2026

Solod (a subset of Go that translates to C) shines when it comes to C interop. But it's also quite fast on regular Go code. In this strings.Builder benchmark — a common, optimized case in Go — Solod performs 2-4 times faster. And the binary is only 53K (vs. 1.6M with Go).

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Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 31/03/2026

While porting Go's standard library to C, I try to avoid heap allocations as much as possible. Of course, sometimes there's no way around them, like in os.ReadFile. But often I can use local stack allocations or a buffer provided by the caller instead. It's working pretty well.

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Anton Zhiyanov @antonz.org · 29/03/2026

If you stare into Go's stdlib long enough, you start seeing things. Dark things. Things you weren't meant to see. Like this function that uses variables named φ and β.

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