An opportunity to mention that Go uses the Plan9 ABI which is different to GCC C style ABI. Plan9 did away with previous ABI conventions to make it easier to port code. Portability was built into Plan9 from the outset, rather than "ok, it works for x86, how shall we #ifdef other CPUs into our code"
Go doesn't use the Plan 9 calling convention, and there's not a single Plan 9 calling convention anyway. Go arguments are passed on the stack, and results are on the stack too. The Plan 9 C compiler used by the Go toolchain passes arguments on the stack, but the return value is in a register. On Plan 9, the first argument is usually (but not always) in a register. All these are different.
Go inherited and extended the Plan 9 toolchain, but the calling convention was changed. The main reason Go returns on the stack is to support multiple return values.
A simple overview is given in this recent article
http://nelhagedebugsshit.tumblr.com/post/84342207533/things-...