The first code comparison in that article compares Go error handling with doing a `catch Exception` in D. I don't find that a fair comparison; `catch Exception` for a block of code that can fail in different ways at different points is a bad practice.
It depends. If you don't care about the specific error and just want to notify the failure up the stack or recovering is perfectly fine. A lot of Go code with the same intent just do a lot of "if err!=nil return err" which is the same but writing for every function call.
By chance, I found (while looking for a rob pike quote) this article critiquing Go's design: It uses D to demonstrate it's arguments. http://nomad.so/2015/03/why-gos-design-is-a-disservice-to-in...