> otherwise you can't really have a default value, because there's no way to tell if a given zero was explicit or implicit You can use pointers, or nullable ty

> otherwise you can't really have a default value, because there's no way to tell if a given zero was explicit or implicit You can use pointers, or nullable types. These are not ideal, admittedly, but it's not true that "there's no way". > there's no way to ensure that every field gets filled in This can also be done with an exhaustive linter. You might think this isn't great either, but then again, always being reminded that you left out some fields is a) annoying, and b) goes against the benefit of default values altogether. I agree with you on immutability, though. I also agree with some of the points in the article, and have my own opinions about things I would like Go to do differently. But if we can agree that all programming languages have warts and that language designers must make tradeoffs, I would say that Go manages to make the right tradeoffs to be an excellent choice for some tasks, a good choice for many tasks, and a bad choice for a few tasks. That makes it my favorite language by a wide margin, though that's also a matter of opinion.