On: Uber Go Style Guide

[logicallee]

Not an expert, but could someone explain why it says: "Panic/recover is not an error handling strategy. A program must panic only when something irrecoverable happens such as a nil dereference." Why is that any more irrecoverable than anything else? (You can check if it's nil before referencing it, right?)

[dilap → logicallee]

nil when you’re not expecting it.

panic when there is a bug in your program; ie program not behaving as expected, all bets off.

return err when expected conditions fail: bad data, service down, whatever — handle gracefully.

[makapuf → logicallee]

This would be preventing, not recovery.