[randomdata]

Exactly. (T, error) simply cannot be used in any real program. Like you say, if you try to use nil your program will crash, and error is asserted to be nil when there is no error, and you have to use that useless nil value in order to utilize T per the style guide, therefore your program will crash essentially all the time. It is impossible to write code that is valid if (T, error) is present.

It's not a question what is or isn't better. That's off-topic. It's just a question of how can we actually deal with the situation with the tools that Go gives us? MarhsalText no doubt contains the answers, but we aren't sure where to find it given the ambiguity. You went to all the trouble of looking it up to tell us about it, but now want to keep it a secret?