Skip to content
Tech News
← Back to articles

Solod – A Subset of Go That Translates to C

read original more articles
Why This Matters

Solod offers a streamlined approach for systems programming by translating a strict subset of Go into clean, efficient C code. This enables developers to leverage Go's familiar syntax and tooling while producing highly performant, low-level C applications with minimal runtime overhead. Its native C interop and focus on manual memory management make it a compelling choice for performance-critical projects.

Key Takeaways

Solod: Go can be a better C

Solod (So) is a strict subset of Go that translates to regular C — with zero runtime, manual memory management, and source-level interop.

Highlights:

Go in, C out. You write regular Go code and get readable C11 as output.

Zero runtime. No garbage collection, no reference counting, no hidden allocations.

Everything is stack-allocated by default. Heap is opt-in through the standard library.

Native C interop. Call C from So and So from C — no CGO, no overhead.

Go tooling works out of the box — syntax highlighting, LSP, linting and "go test".

So supports structs, methods, interfaces, slices, multiple returns, and defer. To keep things simple, there are no channels, goroutines, closures, or generics.

So is for systems programming in C, but with Go's syntax, type safety, and tooling.

... continue reading