Go was designed with explicit error handling as a core philosophy to make error conditions visible and force developers to consciously decide how
to handle them. This approach leads to more reliable and maintainable code.
When errors are ignored using the blank identifier (_), potential failures become invisible, making debugging difficult and
potentially causing silent failures in production. This goes against Go’s principle of making errors explicit and handling them at the point where
they occur.
Non-idiomatic patterns like unnecessary else clauses after error checks or using panic/recover for normal
error flow make code less familiar to Go developers. These patterns increase cognitive load because they don’t follow the established conventions that
Go developers expect.
Abstraction layers that wrap Go’s error handling in complex patterns (like Result types or generic error handlers) hide the explicit nature of Go’s
error handling, making code harder to understand and debug. Go’s simple error interface and explicit returns are designed to be clear and direct.
The idiomatic Go approach of checking errors immediately after function calls and returning them explicitly creates a clear error flow that’s easy
to follow and debug. This pattern is so common in Go that it becomes second nature to experienced developers.
What is the potential impact?
Ignoring errors can lead to silent failures, data corruption, or unexpected application behavior in production. Non-idiomatic error handling
patterns make code harder to maintain and review, especially for teams with varying Go experience levels.
When errors are not handled explicitly, debugging becomes significantly more difficult because error conditions are not visible in the code flow.
This can result in longer development cycles and more production issues.
Using exception-like patterns in Go can mask the true source of errors and make it unclear where failures might occur, reducing the reliability
benefits that Go’s explicit error handling provides.
