So it appears you're right. For things for which you don't care about any value returned this is the case. The reason I haven't run into this is for the most

So it appears you're right. For things for which you don't care about any value returned this is the case. The reason I haven't run into this is for the most part things that can error, they also return a value that matters. You can't use the return value without doing something with the error. http://play.golang.org/p/yreUbxx5Vv http://play.golang.org/p/yreUbxx5Vv So it appears that there is a loophole for things that can error and purely used for side effects.