Comment by bccdee
Yeah default values are one of Go's original sins, and it's far too late to roll those back. I don't think there are even many benefits—`int i;` is not meaningfully better than `int i = 0;`. If it's struct initialization they were worried about, well, just write a constructor.
Go has chosen explicit over implicit everywhere except initialization—the one place where I really needed "explicit."
It makes types very predictable though: a var int is always a valid int no matter what, where or how. How would you design the type system and semantics around initialization and declarations without defaults? Just allow uninitialized values like in C? That’s basically default values with extra steps and bonus security holes. An expansion of the type system to account for PossiblyUndefined<t>? That feels like a significant complication, but maybe someone made it work…