I wish Go had sum types too. But I like being able to write a mutable tree structure without first having to read a whole book on the subject and inventing a new system of pointers. Every language is tradeoffs.
You understand that tree structures aren't just lookup tables, right? I wouldn't roll my own red-black tree (Jesus how tedious would that be). That's not what I'm talking about.
Pointers are orthogonal to sum types. They are completely different things and there is literally no tradeoff for the two things you describe. So you’re not making any sense.
