Haven't we got the languages swapped in this comparison? I'd argue SML gives you less footguns, since the typechecker is much more restrictive about what kind of code it will allow, whereas Go will allow you to write code that has a nil error, for example.

Recently, in the wake of a moment of lucidity, I decided it was time to nope out of using cats, or anything like it, in my Scala code.

It's like that one year that I got myself addicted to Minecraft.