[siebenmann]

The Go specification is careful to not call 'nil' a constant, and in fact at one point specifically says that it isn't ("Conversions", in the section on converting constants into typed constants, which actually uses '(*int)(nil)' as an example of something that is not a typed constant). Also, although it wasn't clear in the entry, the original article that it was a reaction to talked specifically about 'nil variables' (ie, variables with the value of nil).

(Even the concept of 'the value of nil' is tricky in Go; I believe the specification only talks about things being comparable to nil or allowing nil to be assigned to them. The specification really goes to a lot of work to not treat nil as a value, exactly. I suspect that the Go spec authors really did not want a rerun of the C idea that the NULL pointer is '0' and has an all-zero value and so on.)

(I'm the author of the linked-to entry.)