Comment by someone_19

...and Java didn't even have basic enums or sum types from the beginning. But it had null.

They added enums, they added sealed classes. They're trying to get rid of null (apparently it's really hard). The problem is that in 2012, when go 1.0 was released, this should have been obvious to everyone.

Here's a famous discussion from 2009, three years before the 1.0 release (tldr: facepalm)

https://groups.google.com/g/golang-nuts/c/rvGTZSFU8sY