Thornton Edward - Go For Beginners : A Genius Guide to Go Programing

Whats the programming language that professional software developers most want to learn? Would it surprise you to find out that its not Python or JavaScript? Nearly a third of developers chose Go as their top language to learn (Combs, 2020) after Google engineers created it to address problems with existing languages, such as slow speeds. Its also associated with top pay rates in the industry. If youre looking to learn a powerful language that manages to be relatively lightweight and still has the features that developers are looking for, youve come to the right place. Although the tech sector is currently getting the most use out of it, other companies, including American Express, Target, and IBM, have begun using the programming language as well.

You may have picked up this book because youve already heard a lot about Go and want to add it to your programming arsenal. Or maybe you dont have a lot of programming experience, so a lightweight language seems like it could be right up your alley. Perhaps your company is looking into adding Go to speed up the performance of its apps, or youd like to get a job at a company like SoundCloud, Uber, BBC, or Dropbox. If youre familiar with other languages, you can probably pick up Go in a few hours. With less programming experience, youll need to spend a bit longer to learn it. However, its very clear and doesnt have the excess baggage that software development languages tend to add on over time since its a relatively youthful one.

In this book, before we dive into the basics of the language itself, youll discover why its so popular and why more and more programmers are adopting it. Go is more readable than many other languages, which makes using it for open-source programming a natural fit. Youll learn about the foundations, including elementary types and strings, as well as control structures such as if-else and for range. Youll find out about functions in Go and slices and arrays too. Maps and packages are important components of Go programming, and weve provided details about both in the book. In addition, youll learn about methods (and how they differ from functions), interfaces, and reflection. Theres information about reading the language, not to mention goroutines and channels. Finally, and maybe most importantly, weve included a chapter on testing and handling errors as well as a chapter on common pitfalls and patterns. Find out what mistakes many developers make, so you can avoid them yourself! Once youve learned the foundations of the language in this book, youll be ready to start programming in Golang.

As a Go programmer myself, Ive written this book to help others learn the language. I know what the pitfalls are, and Ive helped other software developers like you get up to speed on Go pretty quickly. I think as many developers as possible should start learning it so they can build code that executes faster, is cleaner, and helps spread the popularity of open-source applications.

The sooner you start reading the book, the sooner youll be able to start programmingit really is that simple! Go was designed to be learned fast, and to execute fast. So dive in and get started on your Golang; why wait any longer to add this powerful tool to your kit?

In 2009, a team of Google employees introduced Go to the world. (Its sometimes referred to as Golang to differentiate it from the well-known game of Go.) Supposedly, they started creating it while waiting for a program in another language to compile. The employees were frustrated by the limitations of the languages available at that time and decided to rethink programming from the very beginning, working from the ground up.

Over time, computer languages (just like spoken ones) tend to accumulate extra baggage that gets in the way and slows down the speed of the code. Starting from scratch meant that they could build something lean, yet powerful enough to handle massive code. They also designed it to be open-source, so its easy to create new applications and use them in a variety of industries for many different purposes.

First, a quick refresher on programs: theyre simply a set of instructions. Both compilers and interpreters take human code and translate it into machine-readable code. Compiled languages, like Go, are developed so that the target machine can read the code directly. Interpreter languages such as Python and Ruby dont have the translation inside the source code and require a separate program to read and execute the code.

Go was intentionally created to run on multiple cores, which allows programmers to scale when adding more cores. It also helps them create concurrency since goroutines execute in the background while other jobs are running. If youre building a web app that requires data input from the user, for example, the goroutine can supply pre-populated text as the user is inputting. The program continues to run no matter how long it takes the concurrent processes to operate.

The language uses goroutines instead of threads, which requires much less use of the machines RAM. That makes an app running on Go less likely to crash from running out of memory. Goroutines are functions that execute simultaneously with concurrent goroutines and work on any hardware. By contrast, threads execute the code under the logic of the program and are dependent on the specific hardware being used.

Goroutines communicate with one another easily and without taking up a lot of power through channels. Threads dont have an easy way to talk to one another, which results in communication between threads taking more time and power. As a result, goroutines are faster and cheaper than threads.

Unlike some previous languages, Go is designed for cloud-based servers that most web developers use these days. Its compilable on almost any machine and works on a variety of platforms as well. If youve been using Perl to watch a log, Python to deliver tweets, or Java to manage thousands of concurrent users, youll find that Go can accomplish all of these little tasks and more.

Like Java, Go is compiled and needs no interpreter. That frees up a lot of power for the code itself, making it run much faster. Having lower system requirements also means that users will be able to use your app on older devices, which expands the potential market for your app and may land more money in your pocket.

• Flexibility

This language can solve a lot of problems for developers. It can be used for network and system programming as well as audio/visual apps, such as YouTube. More modern developments, such as big data and machine learning, are possible with this language.

• Automatic documentation

GoDoc will automatically generate the technical documentation for the code. It provides cross-references, examples of the code, and links to the repository for version control. This is especially key for open-source developers and makes it much easier to build apps based on anothers code.

• Embedded testing

The language comes with an API for use in testing and profiling, as well as your own examples. In addition to basic testing, you can also run skip tests and parallel tests, among others.