Has it, though? I've heard it said that k8s codebase is not very go-like.

Yep.

It worked despite of it, not because of it. People can write large programs in assembly, can they not?

Indeed, I've had the same impression from large codebases in C++ - it surely looked like things worked in spite of all the effort to make it as complex and as inefficient as possible. (This, actually, may be a praise for C++ - you can write it as though it was Java and still get a fast program.)

That's because dependency management at Google is different from how the Rest of the World does it.

Apparently not? https://archive.fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/kubernetesclu...