Everything You Need to Know to Start Writing Go
Go is one of the modern programming languages gaining traction on many surveys as developers preferred language. Go has an easy-to-use and understand syntax while providing top-tier performance.
You can use Go to build various applications, from web apps to command-line apps, cloud services, and networking. Go’s ecosystem of third-party packages supports many other use cases.
Go has most of the features you’d expect in a modern language: generics, concurrency, type inference, garbage collection, and many more.
Getting Started With Go
it’s possible to run Go on most operating systems. Head tothe installations pageand download a preferred Go version for your operating system.
Once you’ve downloaded and installed Go, you canstart writing and running Go codein files with a.gofile extension.
You’ll find Go has most of the features and much of the functionality of other programming languages. If you have previous programming experience, you should find Go straightforward.
Variables in Go
Go is quite expressive on the fundamental level. There are two ways you can declare variables in Go. You can use thevarkeyword to declare variables of various data types. After specifying the identifier, you’ll have to set the variable’s data type.
You can useanyas the data type if you’re uncertain of the variable’s data type.
You can also declare constants with theconstkeyword in a similar fashion to declaring variables.
It is impossible to modify constants after their declaration.
Go provides an alternative way to declare variables in functions. Note the use of a colon before the equals sign:
Conditionals in Go
Go also has conditionals for decision-making in programs. You can use theifandelsestatements in your code to handle decisions.
Here’s an exampleifstatement that compares two integers for equality:
you could only useelsestatements after specifying anifstatement, and you have to specify theelseblock after the closingifblock:
Theelseblock runs only when theifstatement evaluates to false. Go doesn’t provide else-if statements, but you’re able to useswitchstatements for complex conditional statements.
Here’s the anatomy of aswitchstatement in Go.
You can create switch statements with theswitchkeyword, after which you can specify different cases with thecasekeyword. You can handle the default case using adefaultkeyword.
For Loops in Go
Go provides for-loops for repetitive tasks, and unlike most languages, there’s no while or do-while loop in Go.
you may use the popular C-style for-loop or therangefor-loop that certain data structures support.
Here’s an example of using the C-style for loop in a Go program:
You can use Go’s built-in range for-loop on compound data structures like slices, maps, and arrays. Therangefunction returns the index and element of the index as it traverses the data structure.
Arrays in Go
Arrays are one of the compound data types in Go. Go arrays are similar to C-style arrays and have a definite length on declaration and instantiation.
Here’s how you may declare arrays in Go:
you may use indexing to access, assign and update elements in a position of the array:
The code above updates or inserts the string as the fourth entry of thearrarray variable.
Slices in Go
Go provides slices as an alternative to arrays for dealing with data of indefinite length. Slices are similar to arrays, except that it’s possible to change the length of slices.
You’ll need to use the built-inmakefunction to create a slice. Pass in the slice’s data type and initial length to the make function.
you may use the append function to insert elements into slices. By default, theappendfunction inserts elements at the end of the slice.
Append operations on slices can be expensive to work with since Go creates a new array on each append operation.
Maps in Go
Maps are the built-in associative (key-value pair) data type in Go. You can use themakefunction to create a map or a simple declaration where you’ll have to instantiate the map.
You can access values in a map by specifying the keys. Also, you can insert values into a map by specifying a key-value pair.
You can use thedeletefunction to remove key-value pairs from maps. Thedeletefunction takes in the map’s identifier and the key of the pair you want to remove:
Functions in Go
Functions are the tool for code reusability in Go. it’s possible to declare functions with thefunckeyword followed by the function’s identifier:
Functions can accept arguments and return values. You’ll have to specify the argument type alongside the identifier for arguments.
You’ll specify the return type before the function’s code block and return a value of the specified type for functions that return values.
Structs in Go
Go isn’t anobject-oriented languageby design, butyou can implement object-oriented features in Gousing structs.
Structs are user-defined types for grouping other data types into a single entity. Go structs can hold values of any Go-supported types, and functions can implement structs.
Here’s how you can declare a struct in Go:
TheGamestruct has fields with types of map, string, integer, and floating point. You can instantiate structs with default values or assign values to them.
Functions can implement and access struct types. You’ll have to specify the struct parameter before the function’s identifier.
When you pass a struct to a function, the function has access to the struct’s fields, and the function becomes a struct method.
Go Has Many Use Cases
You’ve learned the basics of the Go programming language and the syntax to start writing Go programs.
There are many fields and applications where you can use Go. Go is popularly used as a server-side language, and you can always explore building web-based applications with it too.
Should you learn Go? Find out more about job prospects, level of difficulty, and Golang-specific features in this article.
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