There are reference types in Go even though this is also not a super popular term. They still follow the pass-by-value semantics, it's just that a pointer is copied. A map is effectively a pointer to hmap data structure.
In the early days of Go, there was an explicit pointer, but then it was changed.
Slices are a 3-word structure internally that includes a pointer to a backing array and this is why it's also a "reference type".
That said, everything is still passed by value and there are no references in Go.
That's like saying C++ doesn't have references since it's just a pointer being copied around
Go is always pass-by-value, even for maps [0]:
x := map[int]int{1: 2}
foo(x)
fmt.Printf("%+v", x) //prints map[1:2]
func foo(a map[int]int) {
a = map[int]int{3: 4}
}
std::map<int, int> x {{1, 2}};
foo(x);
std::print("{%d:%d}", x.begin()->first, x.begin()->second);
//prints {3:4}
void foo(std::map<int, int>& a) {
a = std::map<int, int> {{3, 4}};
}
It's a quirk of C++ that reference args can't be replaced but pointer args can.
And the fact that C++ references can be used for assignment is essentially their whole point, not "a quirk".