Having your business code riddled with error handling code is just bad design, and will inevitably result in not properly handling certain cases simply because the developer would prefer to write the actual business logic and can’t always stop doing that.

Exceptions (especially checked ones) allow for as fine or crude-grade error handling as needed. Don’t get me wrong, Java’s checked exceptions are not without problems, but compared to Go almost everything is better in this regard.

I've encountered several dangerous incidents of mistakenly ignored errors at an employer that heavily used golang due to the language's bad design.

The Manning Book: "100 Go Mistakes and how to avoid them" gives solid examples of common gotchas with Go's error handling.

I have seen the below occur again and again in Go. (no compiler help, so this can only be caught in reviews and not if the reviewer is tired).

#50: Checking an error type inaccurately

#51: Checking an error value inaccurately

#54: Not handling defer errors

Something OR Error should naturally be expressed as a sum-type, not a tuple (product-type).