What is Go?

Released in 2009
Developed with the Google service workload in mind
Big focus on Concurrency
Statically typed

Useful bits?

Developed for Google *
Easy Concurrency *
Quick to learn *
Built to be read *
Error handling. There are no exceptions *
Opinionated *
Statically compiled *
Gopath! *
go fmt

You could also say

Boring
Old Fashioned
No Package tools
No generics
Worse concurrency that erlang
Built for organisations much larger than you
Inflexible
No generics
Made for “mediocre” programers

YMMV

A larger list can be found at github.com/ksimka/go-is-not-good

Why Should you go?

Simple and boring
Concurrent
Testing
Excellent cross compilation
Simple deployment process
Operation tooling

Boring

Go is no longer exciting
Compatibility guarantees that hold
Error checking is painful but less painful than errors
Old enough that language rants are no longer hosted

Simple

Mandatory Hello World

package main

import "fmt"

func main() {
  fmt.Println("Hello, 世界")
}

Artificial example

func echoConn(conn net.Conn) {
  defer conn.Close()
  for {
    buf := make([]byte, 1024)
    size, err := conn.Read(buf)
    if err != nil {
      return
    }
    data := buf[:size]
    conn.Write(data)
  }
}

func main() {
  l, err := net.Listen("tcp", ":8081")
  if err != nil {
    panic(err)
  }
  defer l.Close()
  for {
    conn, err := l.Accept()
    if err != nil {
      panic(err)
    }
    echoConn(conn)
  }
}

Concurrency

Gophers doing things concurrently and in parallel

func main() {
  l, err := net.Listen("tcp", ":8081")
  if err != nil {
    panic(err)
  }
  defer l.Close()
  for {
    conn, err := l.Accept()
    if err != nil {
      panic(err)
    }
    go echoConn(conn)
  }
}

Racy behaviour

Go’s race detector is awesome

go test -race ./...
go run -race main.go

Testing

Testing is table stakes. You can’t get away for long without it. picture is dogs playing poker

func Fib(n int) int {
  if n < 2 {
    return n
  }
  return Fib(n-1) + Fib(n-2)
}

func TestFib(t *testing.T) {
  tests := []struct {
    name string
    arg int
    want int
  }{
    // TODO: Add test cases.
  }
  for _, tt := range tests {
    t.Run(tt.name, func(t *testing.T) {
      if got := Fib(tt.args.n); got != tt.want {
        t.Errorf("Fib() = %v, want %v", got, tt.want)
      }
    })
  }
}

func benchmarkFib(i int, b *testing.B) {
  for n := 0; n < b.N; n++ {
    Fib(i)
  }
}
...
func BenchmarkFib20(b *testing.B) {
  benchmarkFib(20, b)
}
func BenchmarkFib40(b *testing.B) {
  benchmarkFib(40, b)
}

$ go test -bench=. -benchmem
goos: windows
goarch: amd64
pkg: github.com/kcollasarundell/austnet/mondo/fib
BenchmarkFib1-4         1000000000               2.32 ns/op            0 B/op          0 allocs/op
BenchmarkFib2-4         200000000                6.66 ns/op            0 B/op          0 allocs/op
BenchmarkFib3-4         100000000               11.0 ns/op             0 B/op          0 allocs/op
BenchmarkFib20-4           30000             48133 ns/op               0 B/op          0 allocs/op
BenchmarkFib40-4               2         725500700 ns/op               0 B/op          0 allocs/op
BenchmarkFib10-4         5000000               378 ns/op               0 B/op          0 allocs/op
PASS
ok      github.com/kcollasarundell/austnet/mondo/fib    12.314s

$ benchcmp old.txt new.txt
benchmark           old ns/op     new ns/op     delta
BenchmarkConcat     523           68.6          -86.88%

benchmark           old allocs     new allocs     delta
BenchmarkConcat     3              1              -66.67%

benchmark           old bytes     new bytes     delta
BenchmarkConcat     80            48            -40.00%

package fib_test

import (
    "fmt"

    "github.com/kcollasarundell/hugo/tmpfiles/fib"
)
func exampleFib() {
    fmt.Println(fib.Fib(10))
    // Output: 55
}

% go test . -v
=== RUN   TestFib
--- PASS: TestFib (0.00s)
=== RUN   ExampleFib
--- PASS: ExampleFib (0.00s)
PASS
ok    github.com/kcollasarundell/hugo/tmpfiles/fib  0.010s

Cross compilation

cross eyed cat

CGO_ENABLED=0 GOOS=linux GOARCH=amd64 go build -o linux_amd64_binary
CGO_ENABLED=0 GOOS=linux GOARCH=arm64 go build -o linux_arm64_binary
CGO_ENABLED=0 GOOS=darwin GOARCH=amd64 go build -o osx_amd64_binary
CGO_ENABLED=0 GOOS=windows GOARCH=amd64 go build -o windows_amd64_binary

Simple deployment process

dog delivering parcel

FROM golang:latest AS builder

# Copy the code from the host and compile it
WORKDIR $GOPATH/src/github.com/username/repo
COPY . ./
RUN CGO_ENABLED=0 GOOS=linux go build -a -installsuffix nocgo -o /descriptiveName .

FROM scratch
COPY --from=builder /descriptiveName ./
COPY --from=builder /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
ENTRYPOINT ["./descriptiveName"]

package main

import (
  "net/http"
  "github.com/gobuffalo/packr"
)

func main() {
  box := packr.NewBox("./templates")

  http.Handle("/", http.FileServer(box))
  http.ListenAndServe(":3000", nil)
}

packr && go build

kca.id.au