You are right. I concede nil is not useful. Therefore, we agree that (T, error) cannot exist. As we see in the style guide: "Returning a nil error is the idiomatic way to signal a successful operation that could otherwise fail." This means there is no way to check the error condition. One might be tempted to write `if err != nil`, but because nil is not useful that obviously won't work. That would make nil a useful value, just as I once thought – incorrectly, as you helpfully made me realize – a nil T would be.

And as the Go style guide indicates that you cannot use the T value without first touching the error value, which is, for all practical purposes, impossible since the error value may not be useful, there is just no way this pattern can be used in any actual program.

> But it does match how (T, error) is actually used the majority of the time.

Right. As you have pointed out – of which I was reluctant to admit to, but you said it enough times that it must be true! – (T, error) cannot be used. Period. Its values do not convey the useful information required to be useable. Either does, then, indeed, match how (T, error) is used most of the time... which is to say not at all!

You mentioned something about MarshalText in the slog package showing how an idiomatic function with errors might actually be written, but then we realized that there are multiple implementations with the same name. Which one were you referring to?