[aikah]

> I think that gofmt is particularly innovative, in the sense that it acknowledges that formatting is integral part of the language.

gofmt is still optional. Python significant white spaces are not.

[MereInterest]

I thought that the go compiler would throw an error of your code is not in the format produced by gofmt. You don't need to use the tool, but you need to have your code in the same format that the tool would produce.

[neilc]

> I thought that the go compiler would throw an error of your code is not in the format produced by gofmt.

This is not the case.

[infogulch]

Nope. The gofmt-contract is a purely social one. But it's one held by nearly the entire go community which probably gave you that impression for good reason.

[MereInterest]

Wow, true. The first thing that I read was how to set up emacs to run gofmt every time you save a src file. After that, I never questioned it.