[orblivion]

> Now, structs with pointers have no zero value.

A zero value is much better than undefined value, I'll grant you that. I prefer the forced initialization approach (Haskell, presumably Rust and many others). If I add a new field, I want to know where I need to populate it. Or if you must, maybe a default value defined on the struct (perhaps that's also "considered harmful" for reasons I can't think of at the moment).

But it seems you prefer the ergonomics of default-zero. I don't get it, but I can't argue with preference.

[jchw]

Easy: default zero is simple. It's predictable behavior. It's consistent.

By convention, you should design your code to also treat zero values as empty. In Go, the zero value of bytes.Buffer is a ready to use, empty buffer.

If you drop default zero, you lose a lot of convenience and gain a lot of ceremony. It's not the end of the world, but neither is the null pointer error. It's just another runtime error. Just like divide by zero.