Why Shelley is still written in Go in the agent era

davidcrawshaw · x · 2026-10-12

Responding to claims that agents' easy cross-language translation makes Go obsolete, exe.dev's David Crawshaw explains why Shelley is written in Go.

The current hype cycle around agent-written code centers on TypeScript and Rust, but extrapolating that to "Go no longer makes sense" doesn't follow.
exe.dev's principle: "what is good for developers is good for agents" — LLMs are trained on the history of developers, so established norms retain value.
Go's practical strengths: fast compiling, manageable dependencies, and easy profiling that agents handle well.
Weaknesses acknowledged: CI build-cache management, some heavy third-party dependencies, and manual work when hot paths emerge.

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