It sounds like you've decided to dislike go without ever having actually used it for anything in the "real world".

There is a difference between a string and a byte array. A string is a string. A byte array is a []byte (byte slice). You have to explicitly cast from one to another. Neither are inherently utf8. A string is represented by a byte array under-the-hood, and string literals in your code are read as utf8 encoded. Strings themselves are not necessarily utf8 encoded, and if you need to use a different encoding there's libraries for that (unless you're using something really esoteric).