This is an interesting experiment. I have to say that nearly all the production code I write in Go is typically stuff interacting with external services like d

This is an interesting experiment. I have to say that nearly all the production code I write in Go is typically stuff interacting with external services like databases and SaaS APIs, so the difference in nanoseconds here is not going to move me away from using the safe idiomatic approach, but it is something to bear in mind for whenever I might use Go for very computationally intense tasks.