# Solod

14 Hacker News commenters recommended Solod and 11 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 4 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** A strict subset of Go that translates to C, appealing to people who want Go syntax with direct C interop; critics say it lacks Go library interop and memory safety.

## Why people recommend it

- Go syntax with direct C interop (2 comments): "having the ability to write Go syntax and interop directly with C is the plus" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47669939)) "A safe Go-syntax C target is actually useful for that layer." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47670968))
- Interesting idea: safe Go subset to C (2 comments): "Making a strict subset of some existing language (Go) be a "better C" is quite an interesting idea" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47475301)) "Go subset that compiles into C that is more interesting" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47654094))

## What people warn about

- No interop with Go libraries (2 comments): "There is also no pathway to integrate with existing Go libraries." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47669897)) "and for what? there's no solod-to-regular-go interop aiui, so just some tooling and the standard library?" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48944396))
- Undefined behavior from C translation (2 comments): "since the translation trivially exposes the user to UB that would not be present in Go." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48944891)) "The language is not memory safe" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48943973))
- Unclear advantages over Go (3 comments): "It's easy to be faster than go if you haven't thought about memory management yet." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48942775)) "It's unclear what the advantages are supposed to be." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48945455)) "What's the point if it's incompatible?" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47670520))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Rust](https://hackerapproved.com/p/rust.md): 2039 recommend
- [Go](https://hackerapproved.com/p/go-programming-language.md): 1254 recommend
- [Python](https://hackerapproved.com/p/python.md): 1067 recommend
- [Zig](https://hackerapproved.com/p/zig.md): 743 recommend
- [TypeScript](https://hackerapproved.com/p/typescript.md): 574 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Solod", https://hackerapproved.com/p/solod/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).