Others already pointed out that paragraph 1 isn't really correct. I need to point out that your second point about the linker is totally false. The linker know

Others already pointed out that paragraph 1 isn't really correct. I need to point out that your second point about the linker is totally false. The linker knows and does drop unreferenced code. The import strictness is a language requirement and comes from experience with large codebases at Google and elsewhere. Use goimports in your editor's save hook and don't think about it.