Yes, you could do it that way. Personally I'd restrict the error code to always be an int, which makes for a terser syntax as you don't need the second template

Yes, you could do it that way. Personally I'd restrict the error code to always be an int, which makes for a terser syntax as you don't need the second template parameter. You could also extend it to support multiple non-error return values, like Python does. But this introduces problems with expressing the contract between caller and called (e.g. [1]) and I think the best way to address this might be to extend the language syntax. I think one of the most interesting design choices in Go is that it intentionally omits conventional exceptions. It does have defer/panic/recover [2] though. [1] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/354883/how-do-you-return-multiple-values-in-python http://stackoverflow.com/questions/354883/how-do-you-return-... [2] http://blog.golang.org/2010/08/defer-panic-and-recover.html http://blog.golang.org/2010/08/defer-panic-and-recover.html