Go (Golang) Tutorial

Learn what Go is, why developers use it, and what kinds of programs beginners can build with it.

Install modern Go, check your terminal, and prepare an editor for beginner-friendly Go development.

Write, save, and run a small Go program using package main, imports, and fmt.Println.

Understand Go modules, create a go.mod file, and learn why modules are the default for modern Go projects.

Use the most important Go commands for running, building, formatting, testing, and inspecting beginner projects.

Learn how to create variables with var, short declaration, type inference, and assignment.

Understand Go basic types including strings, integers, floats, booleans, and how to inspect them.

Use constants for fixed values and learn how iota can create simple related numeric constants.

Learn Go arithmetic, comparison, logical, and assignment operators with practical examples.

Work with Go strings, string length, indexing, raw strings, and Unicode runes.

Learn the difference between fixed-size arrays and flexible slices, including append, len, cap, and range.

Use maps to store key-value data, check for missing keys, update values, and delete entries.

Control program decisions with if, else if, else, and switch statements.

Use Go for loops as counters, while-style loops, infinite loops, and range loops.

Write reusable Go functions with parameters, return values, and clear names.

Learn how Go functions return more than one value and why this pattern is central to error handling.

Understand what pointers are, how to use &, *, and when pointer parameters are useful.

Group related fields into custom struct types for users, orders, products, and service data.

Attach functions to types with methods and understand value and pointer receivers.

Learn the beginner idea behind Go interfaces: behavior described by method sets.

Organize Go code into packages, import standard library packages, and understand exported names.

Handle errors explicitly with error return values, nil checks, and clear control flow.

Use defer for cleanup and understand when panic and recover appear in Go programs.

Print formatted output, read beginner terminal input, and understand basic standard input/output ideas.

Put beginner Go skills together by building a small command-line tip calculator.

Use Go interfaces to design small contracts, accept behavior instead of concrete types, and keep packages easy to test.

Build larger Go types by composing smaller structs and interfaces instead of relying on inheritance.

Write reusable Go functions and types with type parameters while keeping constraints simple and readable.

Run functions concurrently with goroutines and understand how lightweight concurrent work differs from parallel execution.

Communicate between goroutines with channels, including sends, receives, buffering, closing, and range loops.

Wait on multiple channel operations and implement timeouts, cancellation, and non-blocking communication.

Coordinate goroutines with sync.WaitGroup and protect shared data with sync.Mutex.

Use context.Context to carry cancellation, deadlines, and request-scoped values through Go programs.

Write focused Go unit tests using the standard testing package, test file naming, and helpful assertions.

Use table-driven tests to cover many inputs clearly with less repetition and better failure names.

Measure Go code with benchmarks and use coverage reports to see which lines your tests execute.

Convert Go structs to and from JSON using encoding/json, struct tags, streams, and validation checks.

Read, write, append, and scan files using os, io, bufio, and path/filepath from the standard library.

Make outbound HTTP requests with net/http, timeouts, context, headers, JSON decoding, and response handling.

Create HTTP handlers, write responses, parse requests, and run a server with sensible timeouts.

Organize routes with ServeMux, method checks, path parameters, route groups, and lightweight router libraries.

Wrap HTTP handlers to add logging, recovery, authentication checks, request IDs, and shared behavior.

Combine routing, JSON, validation, handlers, and status codes to build a small REST API in Go.

Use the standard database/sql package for connections, queries, commands, rows, scanning, and transactions.

Connect Go applications to PostgreSQL using environment-based connection strings, migrations, queries, and safe configuration.

Load application configuration from environment variables with validation, defaults, and safe secret handling.

Use Go 1.21 log/slog for structured logs that are readable locally and useful in production systems.

Organize Go applications with packages, cmd directories, internal code, configuration, tests, and migrations.

Use goroutines, channels, context cancellation, worker pools, and pipelines to build practical concurrent Go programs.

Learn how to improve Go performance with measurement, benchmarks, pprof, allocation awareness, and practical optimization habits.

Understand stack vs heap, escape analysis, garbage collection, slices, memory retention, and safe memory habits in Go.

Use the reflect package carefully for struct tags, generic utilities, validation, and framework-style code.

Protect Go services with secure HTTP defaults, validation, parameterized SQL, secrets management, timeouts, and safe error handling.

Package Go services with multi-stage Docker builds, small runtime images, environment configuration, and container-friendly practices.

Prepare Go services for production deployment with config, graceful shutdown, health checks, migrations, logging, metrics, and release discipline.

Understand where gRPC fits, how Protocol Buffers define APIs, and what a small Go gRPC service looks like.

Organize larger Go codebases with clear packages, dependency direction, small interfaces, config, handlers, services, repositories, and tests.

Use Go tooling like gofmt, go test, go vet, staticcheck, govulncheck, race detection, coverage, and CI as a production quality system.

Build a small task manager command-line application with modules, JSON persistence, commands, error handling, and a clean file structure.

Build a small JSON REST API with net/http, routing, JSON helpers, an in-memory store, validation, and curl-based testing.

Build a background worker with a job queue, worker goroutines, retries, context cancellation, graceful shutdown, and structured logs.

Avoid common Go bugs around nil maps, defer, contexts, goroutines, loop variables, channels, errors, mutexes, and shadowing.

Explore the Go ecosystem, standard library strengths, popular libraries, dependency selection, and when to keep things simple.

Design portfolio projects that prove production Go skills: APIs, CLIs, workers, databases, tests, Docker, deployment, and clear documentation.

Plan your next growth path after Go: systems design, databases, distributed systems, Kubernetes, observability, security, and open source.