> No, it really doesn't do that. Result types which force you to check for an error to get the non-error return value from a function, or Swift `try` which doesn't even let you call a function which may fail without writing some sort of error handling do that. Go leaves it up to the programmer to remember to check for errors, and lets you silently discard the error result.
The compiler is one way that language invariants can be expressed and enforced. But it's not the only one -- another "layer" is convention and code review.
Concretely, something like
v, _ := f(...)
would _never_ pass code review at any reasonable organization.
If you use the compiler to express invariants like this, then the language unavoidably becomes more complex. In some contexts, that makes sense! In others, it doesn't.
