> SQLite could be recoded in Go
Sqlite has been recoded (automatically) in Go a while ago [1], and it is widely deployed
> would probably introduce far more bugs than would be fixed
It runs against the same test suite with no issues
> and it may also result in slower code
It is quite a lot slower, but it is still widely used as it turns out that the convenience of a native port outweighs the performance penalty in most cases.
I don't think SQLite should be rewritten in Go, Rust, Zig, Nim, Swift ... but ANSI C is a subset of the feature set of most modern programming languages. Projects such as this could be written and maintained in C indefinitely, and be automatically translated to other languages for the convenience of users in those languages