> Is Go fundamentally type-unsafe?
Interface{} and nil pointers point to yes.
Interface{} and nil pointers point to yes.
In everyday language a downcast, even a checked one, is not a type-safe operation, and so to the extent that Go's limited type system makes it impractical to write programs without downcasts I'd say that Go is fundamentally type-unsafe.
defer func() {
if e := recover(); e != nil {
fmt.Printf("not a string %v\n", e)
}
}()
v := interface{}(5)
u := v.(string)
fmt.Println(u)
Normally one would say a checked downcast like that is not type-safe, because you can't reason locally about the type behaviour of the downcast based on knowing the type of v. You would have to know the value of v, which is a Turing-complete problem in the general case.