Clean Code: Functions and Error Handling in Go — From Chaos to Clarity, Part 1

Introduction: Why Go Functions Are Special

I’ve reviewed over 1000 pull requests in Go over the past six years, and the same mistakes keep appearing. Remember your first Go code? It probably had dozens of if err != nil checks and 200-line functions that did everything at once. After analyzing over 50 Go projects, I’ve identified the main beginner problem: They write Go like Java or Python, ignoring the language’s idioms.

Common function problems I’ve seen: