i actually don't think the Go version is bad. I can very clearly see what is happening and I can also do something with the error
And really much of the error handling in Go is by convention (ie, `if err != nil { return nil, err }`) rather than actual language semantics.
Honestly it would be nice to be able to always return the error (without special macros or symbols) if there is one unless I've explicitly setup a handler block.
edit: nope, fails with "err evaluated but not used".
The go way is a little more verbose/uglier but we are both going to do it in the same way as will the 30 other developers working on the project.
Regardless of how simple the language, there is always more than one way to do things. Rust is just giving you the choice to eliminate a lot of boilerplate if you so desire. In reality most Go users will opt to use the style mentioned above instead of something more verbose/complex and most Rust users will likely opt for the new ? operator.
In the Rust one, there's no code to read. How is this somehow less readable than the Go version, where there's dozens of lines of code to read that have nothing to do with the task you're trying to accomplish, that are all completely identical?
Ultimately once you are actually writing code it doesn't matter.