Unfortunately, as an ops person you are always at the mercy of developers. If a dev writes this code in Go:

    if err != nil {
        return err
    }

If is equally useless as "letting if fly" in Java. However, in Go, developers seem to have more of an awareness for the need for proper error handling, which is not the case with most Java devs. So your problem is cultural, not technical.

I, for one, really like the idea of checked exceptions, forcing you to document and handle your exeptions. However, that idea has turned out to be too tedious for most people, so it didn't catch on.