The Decision

When we started building Trefur, we faced a fundamental question: what language should our backend be in?

Options we considered:

Node.js — Fast, familiar, great ecosystem

Python — ML/AI native, but slow

Go — Fast, reliable, great for concurrent operations

Rust — Fastest, but high learning curve

We chose Go. Here's why.

The Requirements

Our infrastructure needs to:

Handle high throughput — Many concurrent agent traces

Process in real-time — Sub-second trace processing

Scale horizontally — Add capacity by adding machines

Be reliable — 99.9% uptime is table stakes

Why Go Beat the Alternatives

Go vs Node.js

Node.js is great for I/O-bound workloads. But trace processing is CPU-intensive. Go's compiled nature shines here.

Go vs Python

Python is non-negotiable for AI/ML. But for the infrastructure layer?

10-50x slower than Go

GIL limits concurrency

Memory usage is high

We use Python where it makes sense. Go for the core platform.

Go vs Rust

We love Rust. But:

Steeper learning curve for the team

Slower development velocity

Compile times are painful

For a startup moving fast, Go's balance of performance and productivity won.

Real Benchmarks

Here's what we saw in production:

Throughput: Go handled significantly more traces per second than our Node.js prototype on the same hardware

Latency (p99): Single-digit milliseconds in Go vs ~80ms+ in Node.js

Memory: Go's footprint was a fraction of Node.js — important at scale

The numbers spoke for themselves. Go gave us the headroom we needed.

The Trade-offs

Go isn't perfect:

No generics before Go 1.18 (we use them now)

Error handling is verbose

Dependency management (go.mod) improved but not perfect

But for our use case, the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.

Lessons Learned

The right tool for the right job — Use the best language for each layer

Benchmark with realistic data — Synthetic benchmarks lie

Think about scale from day one — Rewrites are expensive

Conclusion

Go gave us the performance we needed without sacrificing development speed. For agent infrastructure — where throughput and latency matter — it's been the right choice.

Would we use it for everything? No. But for the core infrastructure, Go is unbeatable.

Why We Chose Go for Our Agent Infrastructure