You can make such a type and it works well in practice. First we define the type, hiding the pointer/non-existent value: type Optional[Value any] struct {

You can make such a type and it works well in practice. First we define the type, hiding the pointer/non-existent value: type Optional[Value any] struct { value Value exists bool } Then we expose it through a method: func (o Optional[Value]) Get() (Value, bool) { return o.value, o.exists } Accessing the value then has to look like this: if value, ok := optional.Get(); ok { // value is valid } // value is invalid This forces us to handle the nil/optional code path. Here's a full implementation I wrote a while back: https://gist.github.com/MawrBF2/0a60da26f66b82ee87b98b03336e1f84 https://gist.github.com/MawrBF2/0a60da26f66b82ee87b98b03336e...