There is no call-by-reference in Go. In Go everything is passed "by value". Take a look at this https://dave.cheney.net/2017/04/29/there-is-no-pass-by-reference-in-go

Used it about half a year ago for some small projects. The best point about Riot is the small learning curve (less concepts and APIs). But the community was quite small from that time I worked on. Maybe it gets bigger now.