Go - Introduction

Overview

Estimated time: 15–25 minutes

Go (Golang) is a modern, compiled language designed at Google for building reliable, efficient software. It shines for backends, CLIs, cloud services, and concurrent systems. You’ll learn the language foundations and backend patterns step-by-step.

Learning Objectives

• Understand where Go excels and typical domains of use.
• Get a feel for Go’s design: simplicity, built-in concurrency, fast tooling.
• Know the next steps: install Go, run your first program, explore fundamentals.

Why Go?

• Simplicity: small language surface; you can learn it quickly and read others’ code easily.
• Speed: compiled to a single static binary; fast compile times and execution.
• Concurrency: goroutines and channels built-in.
• Tooling: go fmt, go test, go vet, go build are first-class.
• Deployment: single binary; easy containerization.

Hello, Go

package main
import "fmt"
func main() {
    fmt.Println("Hello, Go!")
}

Expected Output:

Hello, Go!

Common Pitfalls

• Overengineering: idiomatic Go prefers simple code and composition over inheritance.
• Ignoring errors: always check errors returned from functions.
• Using shared mutable state where channels or clear ownership would be safer.

Checks for Understanding

1. List three areas where Go is commonly used.
2. What’s unique about Go’s approach to concurrency?

Exercises

1. Write a program that prints your name and one goal for learning Go.
2. Run it and time the compile/run steps; notice the speed.