> there is literally no way to poll a file descriptor

https://godoc.org/golang.org/x/sys

https://godoc.org/golang.org/x/sys/unix#EpollWait

https://golang.org/pkg/syscall/

Of course it is a bit of a pain to write OS specific variants if you are building a completely crossplatform solution, but it is supported out of the box:

https://dave.cheney.net/2013/10/12/how-to-use-conditional-co...

That said, I agree [regarding the] puzzling decision to not to treat 'select' as a general contract for all asynchronous ops as that fits perfectly with the CSP approach.