I was mostly thinking of Java. Ignoring an exception would be done with try {....} catch (Exception e) {}, while in Go, you would do: x,_ := f(...). And if you want to check a returned error I think the if err!=nil {...} is still a bit less typing than the Java version, and you don't have to declare checked exceptions you might throw.
Yes, I certainly was not advocating ignoring any error. Which is, why exceptions are of dubious use. If you only check exceptions around a larger block of function calls, or every several levels of the call stack, then you might miss the exact source of the exception, unless the exception type is unambiguous. That is, why I find the Go version tedious for sure, but still better than to wrap single function calls into try... catch.
In Java, an exception outside a catch block automatically stops the method and raises the exception to the caller, and then their caller, and so on. In Go you have to write this after every function call (except the tiny minority that can only panic).
Thanks. I did know that about Java (having used it), just that it was not clear to me from your earlier wording, that that is what you were saying. NP.