Wei-Meng Lee - Go Programming Language for Dummies

Go Programming Language For Dummies

Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, www.wiley.com

Copyright 2021 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Published simultaneously in Canada

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without the prior written permission of the Publisher. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions .

Trademarks: Wiley, For Dummies, the Dummies Man logo, Dummies.com, Making Everything Easier, and related trade dress are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and may not be used without written permission. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.

LIMIT OF LIABILITY/DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY: THE PUBLISHER AND THE AUTHOR MAKE NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES WITH RESPECT TO THE ACCURACY OR COMPLETENESS OF THE CONTENTS OF THIS WORK AND SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION WARRANTIES OF FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. NO WARRANTY MAY BE CREATED OR EXTENDED BY SALES OR PROMOTIONAL MATERIALS. THE ADVICE AND STRATEGIES CONTAINED HEREIN MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR EVERY SITUATION. THIS WORK IS SOLD WITH THE UNDERSTANDING THAT THE PUBLISHER IS NOT ENGAGED IN RENDERING LEGAL, ACCOUNTING, OR OTHER PROFESSIONAL SERVICES. IF PROFESSIONAL ASSISTANCE IS REQUIRED, THE SERVICES OF A COMPETENT PROFESSIONAL PERSON SHOULD BE SOUGHT. NEITHER THE PUBLISHER NOR THE AUTHOR SHALL BE LIABLE FOR DAMAGES ARISING HEREFROM. THE FACT THAT AN ORGANIZATION OR WEBSITE IS REFERRED TO IN THIS WORK AS A CITATION AND/OR A POTENTIAL SOURCE OF FURTHER INFORMATION DOES NOT MEAN THAT THE AUTHOR OR THE PUBLISHER ENDORSES THE INFORMATION THE ORGANIZATION OR WEBSITE MAY PROVIDE OR RECOMMENDATIONS IT MAY MAKE. FURTHER, READERS SHOULD BE AWARE THAT INTERNET WEBSITES LISTED IN THIS WORK MAY HAVE CHANGED OR DISAPPEARED BETWEEN WHEN THIS WORK WAS WRITTEN AND WHEN IT IS READ.

For general information on our other products and services, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 877-762-2974, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3993, or fax 317-572-4002. For technical support, please visit https://hub.wiley.com/community/support/dummies .

Wiley publishes in a variety of print and electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e-books or in print-on-demand. If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that is not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at http://booksupport.wiley.com . For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com .

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021934091

ISBN 978-1-119-78619-1 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-119-78620-7 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-119-78621-4 (ebk)

1. Chapter 1
2. Chapter 3
3. Chapter 5
4. Chapter 14
5. Chapter 16

1. Chapter 1
2. Chapter 5
3. Chapter 6
4. Chapter 7
5. Chapter 8
6. Chapter 9
7. Chapter 11
8. Chapter 12
9. Chapter 13
10. Chapter 14
11. Chapter 15
12. Chapter 16
13. Chapter 17

Today, if youre a programmer, you have lots of options when it comes to choosing a programming language. Popular programming languages include C++, C#, Go, Java, JavaScript, Python, R, Swift, and many more. Each language is designed to solve a different set of problems and, depending on what youre going to create (mobile apps, web apps, desktop apps), you may end up learning one or more of these languages.

So, why Go? Turns out that three engineers at Google were frustrated with the various toolsets that they were working on and set out to design a new language that would address the criticisms of other languages while at the same time keeping their useful features.

Go was designed to

• Use static typing and have the run-time efficiency of C
• Have the readability and usability of languages like Python and JavaScript
• Exhibit great performance in networking and multiprocessing

The problems with existing languages forced the team at Google to design a new language from the ground up, creating a lean and mean language designed for massive multithreading and concurrency.

This book covers the basics of Go (also known as Golang), one of the fastest-growing programming languages specifically designed to build faster and more scalable applications.

In this code-intensive book, youre encouraged to try out the various examples, which are designed to be compact, easy to follow, and easy to understand. But you dont have to read the book from the first page to the last. Each chapter is designed to be independent, so you can dive in wherever you want and find the topics that you want to start learning.

If youre short on time, you can safely skip sidebars (text in gray boxes) or anything marked with the Technical Stuff icon (more on that in , later in this Introduction). Theyre interesting, but they arent essential to understanding the subject at hand.

Within this book, you may note that some web addresses break across two lines of text. If youre reading this book in print and want to visit one of these web pages, simply key in the web address exactly as its noted in the text, pretending as though the line break doesnt exist. If youre reading this as an e-book, youve got it easy just click the web address to be taken directly to the web page.

This book is for people who are new (or relatively new) to Go. I dont assume that youre familiar with Go programming, but I do assume the following:

• Youre familiar with the basics of programming.
• Youre familiar with the concept of data structures, such as dictionary, arrays, and structs.
• You have a computer that you can use to try out the examples in this book.

Like other books in the For Dummies series, this book uses icons, little pictures in the margin to draw your attention to certain kinds of material. Here are the icons that I use:

Whenever I tell you something useful or important enough that youd do well to store the information somewhere safe in your memory for later recall, I flag it with the Remember icon.