[eweise]

To me, the problem is that Go returns two values which makes it hard to compose functions.

[sambeau]

That's deliberate to stop you trying to compose functions that return errors. You should be explicitly handling the errors before you compose.

[eweise]

great, except 99% of the time I want to handle the error by bubbling it up to a top level routine.

From my experience, "handling" the error means wrapping it in another error and returning, which is what you get from other languages for free.