First we need to introduce the term "reflections" in Java/C#'s terminology, RTTI in C++'s terminology. It's quite simple actually. The compiler keeps data to find out what is the type of an instance var i SomeType during runtime. Go supports reflection, and that's how it finds out what's the type of handler during runtime.
The handle function uses the reflection. A crude example
package main
import ("reflect";"http")
type fakeHandler struct{}
func (frw *fakeHandler) ServeHTTP(http.ResponseWriter, *http.Request) {}
func handle(pattern string, handler interface{}) {
handlerInterface := reflect.TypeOf(new(http.Handler)).Elem()
handlerFunction := reflect.TypeOf(new(http.HandlerFunc)).Elem()
t := reflect.TypeOf(handler)
if t.Implements(handlerInterface) {fmt.Println("http.Handler")}
//http.HandlerFunc is a different type than
// func(http.ResponseWriter, *http.Request), but we can do
// var hf HandlerFunc = func(http.ResponseWriter, *http.Request){}
if t.AssignableTo(handlerFunction) {fmt.Println("http.HandleFunc")}
}
func f(http.ResponseWriter, *http.Request) {}
func main() {
handle("",&fakeHandler{})
handle("",f)
}