Go is my default language for any non-client-side project. That said, I agree with all the criticisms, except for the one about unused variables/imports and the lack of warnings in the compiler. I'd also add one of my own - I'm an expert go programmer, but I still panic sometimes when dealing with error handling. It is still not as easy as it could be to produce useful error return values.
Indeed. panic is not overly recommended but there's a few places you can nudge it in that just make sense, rather than ensuring the error will successfully propagate up the chain.
