Being confused about nil and the empty slice
A slice is empty if it’s length is zero. A slice is nil if it is nil.
Mistake
Not being educated on the differences between the two.
Fix
A nil slice requires no allocation and because of this we should favor returning nil slices as a result
// if we don't know the length and the slice can be empty
var s []string
// another way to create a nil and empty slice that can be helpful
s := append([]int(nil), 42)
// If we know the future length
make([]string, length)
// Avoid this style unless we are initializing with elements
s := []string{}