Why is this choice better than a language that provides memory safety using linear types so you don't even need a runtime or garbage collector?
Not really a huge number, no. Java is probably the most obvious, if you count that as compiled. Maybe Haskell or D? I suppose even Swift of Objective C if you include RC in the definition of GC.
I would say the focus shouldn't be entirely on GC, however. Safety as a whole is the most important factor, and it's possible to be say without GC, as you point out. I reckon Go is actually quite an attractive language for this sort of application regardless – quite safe, quite lightweight, good libraries.
Of course I used my favorite programming language for building gokrazy :).
I can't resist while here thanking you for i3. I've been a mac user recently, but will likely be back to linux in the next year or so. Using i3 again will be probably be the greatest pleasure involved in that return ;)
I love your stuff! I enjoyed your episode on Go Time as well!
Cheers!
gokrazy’s unit of application is a Go package, so you’d need to write a Go program which then executes the Lua VM. I don’t know what dependencies Lua has — if it cannot be compiled statically, I’d recommend against using Lua in this context.