What version of Go are you using (go version)?

$ go version
go version go1.16.2 darwin/amd64

Does this issue reproduce with the latest release?

Yes.

What operating system and processor architecture are you using (go env)?

$ go env

What did you do?

In this example the defer function doesn't change the returned value whereas using the named return values would do the trick in this example.

If the defer function is executed after the caller returns as this blog post suggests, that would explain it. However, the doc says defer functions are executed before the caller returns.

What did you expect to see?

The blog post and the Golang doc being consistent.

What did you see instead?

The blog post says the list of saved calls is executed after the surrounding function returns whereas the Golang doc says the list of saved calls is executed before the surrounding function returns