That's fine, I know it can't please everyone, but as mentioned in the docs and the article, this is more about Lua-like semantics with a syntax very close to Go

That's fine, I know it can't please everyone, but as mentioned in the docs and the article, this is more about Lua-like semantics with a syntax very close to Go than Java. There are no exceptions per se, there are runtime errors returned to the Go host, and a protected mode using `recover()`. The preamble before `if` is mainly because the variables are function-scoped anyway, but again, a lot of things may change, this is the very first step in a long iteration process, and the feedback I'm getting today from the various forums will help a lot in knowing how to steer the ship.