Technically, Java has the same rule, it's just that all user-defined types are reference types, and so the zero value for them is always spelled "null". I'm not

Technically, Java has the same rule, it's just that all user-defined types are reference types, and so the zero value for them is always spelled "null". I'm not sure how Scala pretends otherwise, but I have worked with Kotlin, and non-nullable object fields and method arguments are always a bit of a lie, since the underlying JVM machinery permits, and defaults to, null. (Despite the original authors of Go being unfamiliar with Java, they do seem to have settled on a number of the same decisions.) Personally, I'm fine with discriminated unions always allowing "nil" in Go, since IMO the most sensible way to implement them anyway is as a special case of interfaces. Not everyone feels the same way, though.