I don't think GP was saying that Go should have provided some advance to programming language research, but that it doesn't show much awareness of advances that have already been made.
[Go] doesn't show much awareness of advances that have
already been made.
Java, C#, Python, Lisp, and Erlang would all criticize
Go for an unqualified new exception system
func canFail() (int, error) { ... }
value, err := canFail()
if err != nil {
// handle
}