Description
Go (often referred to as Golang) is an open-source programming language created at Google in 2007 by Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, and Ken Thompson. It is a statically typed, compiled language designed for simplicity, high performance, and reliability. Go is syntactically similar to C but adds memory safety, garbage collection, structural typing, and CSP-style concurrency.
Pros & Cons
✅ Pros
- High Performance: Compiled directly to machine code.
- Concurrency Support: Built-in Goroutines and Channels.
- Simple Syntax: Easy to learn for developers coming from Python, Java, or C++.
❌ Cons
- No Generics (in older versions): Generics were added in Go 1.18.
- Implicit Interface Implementation: Can be confusing for beginners.
When to Use
Use Go for building scalable cloud services, microservices, distributed systems, and CLI tools.
Example
This is a minimal 'Hello, World' program in Go.
package main
import "fmt"
func main() {
fmt.Println("Hello, World!")
}Best Practices
Use `gofmt` to automatically format your code. Go developers value consistency.