Harder than scripting, but easier than programming in C

So Much More

There is so much more I could talk about: for example, the fact that – instead of typical object orientation – Go only offers structs as instance variables. It addresses them with method-style functions. Or what about the ingeniously simple reader interface that lets functions process data transparently, no matter if they come from a file, an Internet connection, or a string? Using code reflection to examine your code's data structures at runtime would be another topic, or the elegant defer statement to free up resources at the end of a function, and much more, but that will have to be deferred to another time for lack of space.

At the end of the day, Go is a very well thought out language that builds on the tradition of time-honored and overwhelmingly successful languages such as C, but eliminates their shortcomings and gives programming professionals a modern tool for the 21st century.

Infos

  1. Go tutorial: https://tour.golang.org
  2. Donovan, Alan A. A., and Brian W. Kernighan. The Go Programming Language. Addison-Wesley Professional, 2016, https://www.pearson.com/us/higher-education/program/Donovan-Go-Programming-Language-The/PGM234922.html
  3. Listings for this article: ftp://ftp.linux-magazine.com/pub/listings/linux-magazine.com/250/
  4. "Getting to Go: The Journey of Go's Garbage Collector" by Rick Hudson, The Go Blog, July 12, 2018, https://blog.golang.org/ismmkeynote

The Author

Mike Schilli works as a software engineer in the San Francisco Bay Area. Each month in his column, which has been running since 1997, he researches practical applications of various programming languages. If you email him at mailto:mschilli@perlmeister.com he will gladly answer any questions.

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