you wrap those properly. believe me waking up in the middle of the night because someone abused panic to throw state around, end up being called from a new goroutine, just enough to crash the entire pod, sucks even more.

You are probably thinking about (proto)reflect.

No, I am thinking of encoding/json. It uses Go's exception handlers to pass errors around, much like the code above.

Forgive me as I'm not experienced in Go. I had a look at the API reference for encoding/json[1] and performed a (very hasty) search on the source code[2].

The API reference doesn't state that panics are a part of the expected error interface, and the source code references seem to be using panics as a way to validate invariants. Is that what you're referring to?

I'm not entirely sure if the panics are _just_ for sanity, or if input truly can cause a panic. If it's the latter, then I agree - yikes.

[1] - https://pkg.go.dev/encoding/json

[2] - https://cs.opensource.google/search?q=panic&sq=&ss=go%2Fgo:s...

The use does not transcend package boundaries, but you will find its use within the package itself, which is within the Go codebase spoken of earlier.