> When I set out, I had several objectives:
> Easy to install and run, especially for distributed deployments.
> [...]
> The first two objectives strongly scream Python as the language of choice for Quokka.
Python is probably one of the last languages I'd consider if ease of deployment is a priority. Packaging has historically been a mess, and deploying standalone binaries across platforms is a pain. State of the art solutions are 3rd party and involve bundling the intepreter for each platform. It's been a few years since I last used it for anything serious, but I believe this is still the case.
Whereas something like Go actually makes this infinitely easier, for both the developer and the user. One native Go command builds a standalone binary for each platform. It couldn't be simpler.
The other objective of supporting Python UDFs necessarily ties you to Python. And since this is solving a data science problem, it makes sense for it to be written in Python.