> And passing pointers to strings rather than strings, hmmm.

Are you referring to the "URL" example? That isn't a case of passing pointers to strings, that is passing a URL (fmt.Stringer) where the String method has a pointer receiver.

To demonstrate why the pointer would be needed in that case, consider:

    type URL struct{}
    func (*URL) String() string { return "https://..." }
    func print(v any)           { fmt.Println(v.(fmt.Stringer).String()) }
    func main() {
        print(&URL{}) // ok
        print(URL{})  // panic
    }