[TwentyPosts]

All of this could've been prevented if Go just had two ways to compile. Debug and release.

The go devs decided against this since they didn't want to build a highly optimizing (read: slow) compiler, but that is missing the point of developer ergonomics.

[umanwizard]

It could be prevented in an even simpler way: emitting warnings.

Most people nowadays ban building with warnings in CI and allow them during local development. But “CI” was barely a thing when go was developed so they just banned them completely. And now they are probably too stubborn to change.

[yencabulator]

The Go decision was explicitly to not have warnings, and the unused identifier thing complained about is merely a consequence of that.

https://go.dev/doc/faq#unused_variables_and_imports