We don't all agree that it feels super bad. I think you are completely wrong on the ergonomics. Go's error handling looks ugly to people used to languages that try to _hide_ error states, but it's so much easier to work when you are unfamiliar with the codebase or when it's been a few months since you last touched the code. Clarity of unfamiliar code is part of language ergonomics as well.
I'm not sure I follow your argument about Go "approaching" checked-exceptions in Java. Nothing is being forced on you. Go has worked the same way for a decade now. There is a lot of hugely successful software written in Go. In all that time, errors have worked the same way. In terms of choosing principles over ergonomics, in fact the Go committee chose ergonomics over the mistaken principle that "explicit error checking is so ugly and onerous that it's worth adding magic behavior and removing clarity".
In any case, no one is arguing we shouldn't or couldn't improve Go's ergonomics. Rather, the conclusion from people who work with Go every day and are happy with the tradeoffs for their particular projects was that this specific change would make more things worse than it made better.
I'm not sure I follow your argument about Go "approaching" checked-exceptions in Java. Nothing is being forced on you. Go has worked the same way for a decade now. There is a lot of hugely successful software written in Go. In all that time, errors have worked the same way. In terms of choosing principles over ergonomics, in fact the Go committee chose ergonomics over the mistaken principle that "explicit error checking is so ugly and onerous that it's worth adding magic behavior and removing clarity".
In any case, no one is arguing we shouldn't or couldn't improve Go's ergonomics. Rather, the conclusion from people who work with Go every day and are happy with the tradeoffs for their particular projects was that this specific change would make more things worse than it made better.