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does anyone else think Go would be a much better language without the pointer distinction? maybe an explicit mutable type modifier instead?

Yea, I think references to other values should be a type, like a `Reference[T]`. Then you can pass something by reference, rather than value, without having confusing referencing/dereferencing. A `Reference[T]` could have some sort of element reflection, where you can just use it like it's a `T`.

Pointers, referencing, dereferencing; that can get confusing even for skilled engineers.

Go can use escape analysis to determine if a heap allocation is actually required in some cases.

That's one of the most annoying things to me coming from Python: the inability to have a default argument value.