What's the point of having pointers in Go?

Question

I know that pointers in Go allow mutation of a function\'s arguments, but wouldn\'t it have been simpler if they adopted just references (with appropriate const or mutable q

Answer 1

I really like example taken from http://www.golang-book.com/8

func zero(x int) {
    x = 0
}
func main() {
    x := 5
    zero(x)
    fmt.Println(x) // x is still 5
}

as contrasted with

func zero(xPtr *int) {
    *xPtr = 0
}
func main() {
    x := 5
    zero(&x)
    fmt.Println(x) // x is 0
}