It is used for things like printf and JSON marshaling. I’ve been using Go regularly since 2012 and this isn’t a real problem. The reflection in the standard lib and popular third party libs (and most unpopular third party libs for that matter) is rock solid. Moreover, reflection probably accounts for less than 1% of Go code—not sure where you’re getting “everywhere” from. So I guess I’m calling your bluff.
Even if your claim of "probably ... less than 1% of Go code" is accurate, appearing somewhat less often than 1 out of every 100 lines of code is _everywhere_ to me...
To be clear, I didn't say "less than 1 out of every 100 lines", but in any case I don't consider yours to be a reasonable definition of "everywhere". Especially since such a low frequency doesn't support your claim that "you see runtime type errors too many times to count". Perhaps you're using libraries that are far, far below the ecosystem's average quality?
