This is the idiomatic way of declaring empty slices in Go, and it prints true:

    var slice []string
    fmt.Println(slice == nil)

Whether to judge the line below idiomatic, or not, is a question I leave to the authorities -- but it is highly convenient, and prints "false".

  slice := []string{}
  fmt.Println(slice == nil)

This is indeed a nil slice, and it does have len() == 0, but Go also has a concept of empty slices separate from nil slices

The language just has a bad habit of confusing them some of the time, but not consistently, so you can still occasionally get bit by the difference

As someone who uses Go a lot, it's just one of those things...

Yes because it's nil. You declared it but not created. Same for map. Same for var something *string