[kevincox]

No, but in C you can't apply `&` to any stack value and "automagically" pop it onto the heap. Or from another point of view everything in Go is logically on the heap, the compiler just optimizes values that don't have their address taken to live on the stack.

In C:

  int *f() {
    int x = 0;
    return &x;
  }

It works, but it is wrong. The C type system isn't smart enough to realize the lifetime of x in this case. It is not allowed for a function return because C does have the concept of a temporary value so it is disallowed because it is basically always incorrect to do so.

Note that C++ does somewhat allow this with lifetime extension. It is somewhat like what I expected Go to do, except because lifetime extension only extends to the enclosing block it is more of a footgun. With a dynamic tracing garbage collector like Go it not a footgun.