By day I work with a team in a language that sees errors ride on the exception handling system. Staying within the original example, I see code like this all the time (too often, even, but that's another topic for another day):

    try {
        file = getFile()
    } catch(/* ... */) {
        fileUnavailable()
    }

Idiomatic Go says leave it to the caller. Like above, when only wants to know if there is "file or no file" without concern for why there is no file, then:

    file, _ := getFile() // The second return argument is an error.
    if file == nil {
        fileUnavailable()
    }