[skydhash]

There's no happy path in programming. Errors are just some of the many states in the code and the transition to them doesn't disappear magically because you chose to not specify them. Actually returning an error is just a choice, you can chose to handle the situation, maybe log the error and go on your merry way. Or you panic() and cancel the whole call stack back to a recover(). I like Go because it forces you to be explicit.

[peterashford]

There absolutely is a happy path in programming - what you want the code to do, assuming no errors. It's the intent of the code and that surely is an important thing for the code to express.