Learning GoLang 📚

Everything in Go is pass by value

🤔 Why use Go?

• Like C, but with garbage collection, memory safety, and special mechanisms for concurrency
• Pointers but no pointer arithmetic
• No header files
• Simple, clean syntax
• Very fast native compilation (about as quick to edit code and restart as a dynamic language)
• Easy-to-distribute executables
• No implicit type coercions
• Simple built-in package system
• Simple tools
• Inferred types on variable declarations
• Slices and maps (feel like arrays and hashmaps in dynamic languages)
• Explicit error handling with error values and multiple return
• Interface-based polymorphism
• Interfaces implicitly implemented (allowing post-hoc interfaces for imported types)
• Goroutines (runtime managed lightweight threads)
• Channels for coordinating goroutines and sharing data between them (based on the theory of CSP)

🧶 Base types

int8           // 8-bit signed int
int16          // 16-bit signed int
int32          // 32-bit signed int
int64          // 64-bit signed int

uint8          // 8-bit unsigned int
uint16         // 16-bit unsigned int
uint32         // 32-bit unsigned int
uint64         // 64-bit unsigned int

float32       // 32-bit float
float64       // 64-bit float

complex64      // two 32-bit floats
complex128     // two 64-bit floats

int        // 32- or 64-bit signed int (depends upon compilation target)
uint       // 32- or 64-bit unsigned int (depends upon compiliation target)

uintptr    // unsigned int large enough to store an address on compilation target

string     // a string value is an address referencing UTF-8 data elsewhere in memory
bool

byte    // alias for uint8
rune    // alias for int 32 (used for representing Unicode code points)

🔮 Semi-colon insertion

The semi-colons used in most C-like syntaxes are generally left implicit in Go. Semi-colons are implicit at the end of any line ending with:

• a number, string, or boolean literal
• an identifier
• the reserved words break continue fallthrough return
• the operators ++ --
• the end delimiters } ] )

🎉 Variable declarations and type inference

The full syntax for declaring a variable:

var NAME TYPE;                   // declare without initialization
var NAME TYPE = EXPRESSION;      // declare with initialization