This is only method receivers, not for arguments. Essentially the way of invoking a method on a pointer receiver (like '->' in C/C++) isn't any different than invoking it on a value receiver (like '.' in C/C++). But you can't pass 'pointer to int' to a method where 'int' is expected.

> some simple, compile-time validated sugar to pass the error value up the call chain

This bothers me a bit, too. Sometimes I was able to work around it in a creative way. Take http handlers as an example:

  func standardHandler(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
    // errors may occur here...
  }

  type naiveHandler(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) error

  func handleErrors(fn naiveHandler) {
    return func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
      if fn(w, r) != nil {
        // handle errors
      }
    }
  }

  http.HandleFunc("/", handleErrors(handler1))
  http.HandleFunc("/", handleErrors(handler2))
  // ...

  RETURN_ERR_UNLESS_NIL(/* Go expression returning only error */)

The less magic, syntactic sugar and tricks, the better.

The way that it is now, goquery provides easier and more familiar HTML manipulation.

  rows := scrape.FindAll(table, scrape.ByTag(atom.Tr))
  cols := []*html.Node{}
  for _, row := range rows {
      // Find returns the first result
      col, ok := scrape.Find(row, scrape.ByTag(atom.Td))
      if ok {
          cols = append(cols, col)
      }
  }