Go Language

Introduction

Characteristics

Google was using c++, java and python.

• c++ high performance, type safety, slow compile, complex
• java rapid compile, type safety, complicated eco system
• python easy to use, lack of type safety, slow

So Go was created which had

• Fast compilation
• Fully compiled, better performance
• Strongly typed
• Concurrent by default, threaded
• Garbage collected
• Simplicity as a core value, for example Garbage collected, Strongly typed.

Whats Go Good At?

Good

• Go is easy to learn
• Easy concurrent programming with goroutines and channels
• Great standard library
• Go is performant
• Language defined source code format
• Standardized test framework
• Go programs are great for operations
• Defer statement, to avoid forgetting to clean up
• New types

Bad

• Go ignored advances in modern language design
• Interfaces are structural types
• Interface methods don't support default implementations
• No enumerations
• The := / var dilemma
• Zero values that panic
• Go doesn't have exceptions. Oh wait... it does!

Ugly

• The dependency management nightmare
• Mutability is hardcoded in the language
• Slice gotchas
• Mutability and channels: race conditions made easy
• Noisy error management
• Nil interface values
• Struct field tags: runtime DSL in a string
• No generics... at least not for you
• Go has few data structures beyond slice and map
• go generate: ok-ish, but...

Hello World

package main

import (
	"fmt"
)

// Comments are here
func main() {
	fmt.Println("Hello World")
}