> Ugh. This is something I hate about Go

Yeah it drives me insane. Working in any ide's golang lsp/plugin that tries to solve this for you every time you hit save also drives me insane. Feel like something is lost experiencing/learning/becoming masterful at a language when these types of decisions get automated while you're hand crafting.

I actually really valued my exploration into C where if i did that, id get a fat warning on compile, but I could still proceed to test my stuff. When I'm ready to commit to some cleanup efforts which is usually a headspace-thing, then I go cruise around and cleanup unused variables.