> So for whatever reason, Go has decided that null pointer dereferences are not a big deal. But God help you if you try to comment out a variable use without assigning it to "_". Then the program fails to compile.

I think that's a good explanation of why people are so frustrated with this. There are lots of features like go fmt, go vet, the compiler checking that you use all variables and all imports that can feel a bit restrictive. But for something like null pointers, there is nothing. It's incoherent.