[danudey]

Go is less useful on older systems, since you have to go out and get the Go compiler/etc. and compile them yourself before you can compile anything else, whereas you can expect that all systems (not just recent ones) have a C compiler installed.

[peterwaller]

What's wrong with compiling elsewhere and transporting the binary there?

Also, there are builds of the compiler that one can use, you're not usually forced to compile the compiler.