February 17, 2026
Go-fix or go-home
Using go fix to modernize Go code
Go’s new auto-fix button has devs cheering, AI blushing
TLDR: Go 1.26 rewrites “go fix” to automatically modernize Go code, with preview and custom fixers for local rules. Commenters cheer the “free upgrade” vibe, roast AI assistants for clinging to outdated patterns, and celebrate self-service tools that replace risky search-and-replace with smarter, code-aware rewrites.
Go just dropped a fully revamped “go fix” in Go 1.26, and the community is treating it like a magic “free upgrade” button for code. The loudest cheer? “Reviewers will thank you” energy, with fans like kiernanmcgowan gushing about getting missed language improvements “for free.” Meanwhile, homarp sparks drama by roasting AI coding assistants: those bots kept spitting out old-school Go even when told to be modern. Cue memes about “AI detox” and “ChatGPT, meet the freshness police.”
Even skeptics are impressed. retrodaredevil doesn’t like Go—full stop—but still salutes the move, comparing it to Java’s OpenRewrite and admitting that baked-in auto-modernization is a flex. The real sleeper hit is self-service fixers: Arifcodes calls it the underrated MVP, promising to end those “grep+sed adventures” that turn every internal API change into a headache. An “AST-aware” (read: code-structure-aware) rewriter that understands your project? That’s music to monorepo ears.
Fans traded tips about the preview mode (-diff) like it’s a before-and-after makeover, and chuckled over running it twice for different systems so it catches everything. With analyzers named like mini clean-up crews (“any,” “forvar,” “fmtappendf”), the vibe is: push once, get modern everywhere, and let the tools do the arguing. The mood: ecstatic, slightly petty toward AI, and very pro-fixer.
Key Points
- •Go 1.26 includes a completely rewritten ‘go fix’ subcommand to modernize Go code using newer language and library features.
- •‘go fix’ updates source files in place, skipping generated files; developers should run it when upgrading toolchains and start from a clean git state.
- •The -diff flag previews changes; available analyzers can be listed with ‘go tool fix help’, with examples like any, forvar, mapsloop, and minmax.
- •Analyzers can be selectively enabled or disabled via flags; by default all analyzers run in a single invocation.
- •Because each run targets one build configuration, the post advises running with different GOOS/GOARCH values and possibly multiple times to capture synergistic fixes.