A lot of people say this to mean that object types can't be set to nil. The classic fix is to implement parametrized types (which Go has resisted), although since Go is rabid about simplicity and puts a low priority on generality (generic maps but no other containers, automatic JSON but no other serializations, actor model keywords but no other concurrency primitives, type switch but no real pattern matching), it might better fit the Go philosophy to define only one kind of fallible type, like maybe[T], which is always either T or an error.