[justinsb]

My understanding is that defer is the broad equivalent of a Java finally block, and recover is the broad equivalent of a Java catch block. I think of both as ways of handling exceptions, although I see how the word "handle" could be interpreted in a way that makes my statements nonsensical. By handling I meant "doing the right thing", not "swallowing the panic/exception"; I apologize for the ambiguity you found.

If you do still think I have gaps in my knowledge, I humbly suggest that you briefly fill in those gaps with facts; it should save you time in the long run and will likely win you a few converts!

[enneff]

You're looking at it wrong. Stop thinking about Java. Go programmers rarely use recover. There are many that have probably never used it at all. Go does not have exceptions. Panics are only vaguely like exceptions, but you shouldn't even think about them in those terms. It is confusing you badly.

Defer is primarily used to make sure that clean-up happens in functions that have multiple exit points (return statements). It's a convenient side effect that defers are executed while a panic unwinds the stack, but it is rarely the first thing on the mind of the Go programmer when they type "defer".

Embrace error values. Return them! Check them! Panic when shit goes really bad. That's it. If you're writing Go code and you're thinking about "throw" "catch" or "finally", you're doing it wrong. Go's features do not map cleanly to those concepts, because Go doesn't have exceptions.