[theamk]

It saddens me tbat the default error handler is "return err", as opposed to something that appends context/stack trace.

We've converted a few scripts and webapps from Python to Go, and if one does default handling ("return err") the error logs became significantly less useful, compared to exception backtraces. Yes, there are ways around it, but most tutorials don't show them.

[Ferret7446]

Stack traces are expensive. You need to make a conscious decision whether you want a stack trace attached to a particular error (and possibly where it gets attached, if you want it higher in the call chain), which aligns with Go's design philosophy for error handling.

[theamk]

C++-style stack traces, with stack walking and ELF section analysis, are expensive. Python's stack traces, which also involve reading source files from disk, are expensive as well.

But go's do not have to be. A compiler can expand "foo()?" to something like:

err := foo(); if err != nil { return err.WithStringContext("foo() in MyFile.go:25"); }

The only complexity there is appending a constant pointer to "err", and this only happens in error case that uses "?". Depending on implementation it could be a single word write, if compiler can prove there are no other users of "err".

(And if your code is carefully written to be allocation-free and appending a pointer kills that? In this case, you don't have to use "?", put "return err" directly.)