That's not even true. You can use the compiler and linkers to your hearts content.

What you meant to say was, their braindead idea was that if you want to be able to trivially use ANY go program or library on GitHub, you can use $GOPATH and the go tool [1] and not fuck around with autotools and makefiles.

If you're into S&M, no one is stopping you from using the core pieces of the `go` tool by hand.

[1]: ALL of my code can be download, built and run with: `go get github.com/myname/myproject; myproject` (I have $GOPATH/bin on my path)