Getting Started with Go

NOTE: This was originally written as a reference to a friend.
Last update: 6 Mar, 2020

I can only speak from my experience, so will very briefly touch on that.

I only have a “fake” CS-ish degree, where I graduated without knowing what cd or ls command is. I don’t even know how that was possible 👻

After graduating university, I spent fair amount of time learning on my own, and started my career in software support and development. I then became a C# developer, with strong interest in functional language such as Haskell, F#, OCaml, etc. I worked with Python and other scripting languages. I did some JavaScript development including AngularJS/Angular.

Let’s start with this question, though you may already have your own answer:

There are many great posts that cover this in detail out there — but it can be overwhelming and difficult to follow, especially if they assume you know the basic syntax (I remember thinking “how am I supposed to know what goroutine is at this stage…?”).

My answer to this question is this.

If you are aiming to build something complex, you have to start simple first.

Go’s simplicity is a feature, and toolings around it make it even better. Go is an opinionated language, but a great fit for software engineering at scale. Because Go is made to be simple for developers, it does not take long to be productive.

Firstly, you need to cover the basics. The below steps should be done in order. Within each step, you can choose the order — generally, following from the top to bottom should work.

After you covered the basics, it’s time to prepare for real use and productivity. The below is a list of key areas for you to be productive. I would argue that at least Master Testing is a must-have for any Go developer.

At this point, you should be feeling confident and productive with Go. As mentioned, Go’s simplicity allows us to be productive really quickly. But the journey doesn’t stop here.

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