Generally speaking there has to be a mechanism for optional handling of return values, in Go you can ignore everything (ew), you can use placeholders `_`, or you can explicitly handle things - my preference.

If you say "Well in C you have to handle the returns - I am not across C enough to comment, but I will ask you - Does C actually force you, or does it allow you to say "ok I will put some variables in to catch the returns, but I will never actually use those variables" - because that's very much the same as Go with the placeholder approach

edit: I am told the following is possible in C

trySomething(); // Assumes that the author of trySomething has not annotated the function as a `nodiscard`

(void)trySomething(); // Casts the return(s) to void, telling the compiler to ignore the non-handling

int dummy = trySomething(); // assign to a variable that's never used again

I welcome correction