`defer` mostly makes sense when there's multiple exit paths (returns) or if there's a chance any of the code panics. Neither is the case in this instance, so just doing it like that is fine. There is also a slight overhead for deferring, as it needs to allocate some memory on the heap

no reason imho..the function is pretty trivial. But also not a reason not to use it as a performance impact would be minimal :-)

The behavior is different if a panic occurs, isn't it? But is there any chance that this particular initialization code might panic in the first place?

Given the current code and no races against the values being initialized: no, there is no chance for a panic.

This is not a good assumption. The code will panic, for instance when it can't allocate memory, or runs into signal handling issues.

understood. thank you.