Ask HN: What is the best way to learn Go?

[W-Stool]

After 40+ years of writing C I'm going to learn Go. Is "The Go Programming Language" still the way? It is 8 years old now and the language has seen more than a few changes between then and now. What books should I be looking at?

[t-3]

Read the spec: https://go.dev/ref/spec

Check out the examples: https://gobyexample.com/

Check the docs for anything else: https://go.dev/doc/

[W-Stool]

This was exactly what I was looking for. Thank you!

[cpach]

Skimming the spec is not a bad idea. It’s actually quite short.

[codegeek]

Other than some of the resources mentioned already in comments, I highly recommend Alex Edwards books Lets Go and Lets go Further. Helped me a lot and still does when building Web Applications.

https://www.alexedwards.net/

https://lets-go.alexedwards.net/

https://lets-go-further.alexedwards.net/

[runjake]

Here's how I did it as someone previously competent in C, C#, Java, etc.

I started here: https://go.dev/learn/

1. Did the Go Tour: https://go.dev/tour/welcome/1

2. Then Getting Started: https://go.dev/doc/tutorial/getting-started

Then, I started a non-trivial project using the excellent Go docs and LearnXinYMinutes as references. https://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/go/

Once I kind of got the hang of Go, I started using Go by Example much more. I've never read a Go book.

With competent prompting, Claude.ai seems pretty good at generating Go code and explaining Go code and this has really accelerated it for me.

All together, I started from not knowing Go to beginning on a non-trivial program in my first 4 hours. It was super great.

[blinded]

When I was first learning I liked this video series.

https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/intermediate-go-program...

Also checkout this repo for helpful links: https://awesome-go.com/free-e-books/

[cpach]

There’s no Go book that I personally would recommend without hesitation.

Instead, I would suggest that you try to find a bunch of blog posts and lectures and read/watch them in order to get a feeling of the Go philosophy. The official Go blog has some good articles and otherwise I recommend to have a look at what Rob Pike and Russ Cox has written/presented.

Then I believe that as soon as possible it’s a good idea to start some toy project so that you can dive in.

I’m afraid I don’t have too many links to share. This might be a good starting point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VcArS4Wpqk

Here’s a meta-resource that could be useful: https://github.com/avelino/awesome-go (see the Resources section at the end of the ToC).

Best of luck!

[daviddever23box]

If you haven't used a more current programming language in terms of tooling, you may be in for a shock: package management, concurrency, formatting and linting are all sorted, with decent support in Visual Studio Code. I'd honestly look at these things first so that you can right-size individual modules, etc.

[h4ck_th3_pl4n3t]

https://quii.gitbook.io/learn-go-with-tests

Learn go with tests shows you the "go way" to do it, and introduces you to its integrated testing system while also teaching you go's language concepts.

I highly recommend it, it's awesome and was definitely worth doing it even whennyou are an experienced go programmer already.

The key to benefit from go's toolchain the most is to set your opinions aside. Once you do that, the toolchain will automate so many things for you that you will learn to like only a couple weeks later because it takes time for the conventions to sink in...

[kandros]

I have a very good memory on this

[beeburrt]

This series is excellent and underrated. Go Class:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoILbKo9rG3skRCj37Kn5...

This guy made this for his teammates as a Christmas present and then released it for free when he could have charged money for it somewhere like Udemy or Coursera.

[gaws]

> After 40+ years of writing C I'm going to learn Go.

Why make the switch now?

[erik_seaberg]

Any garbage collected language avoids a lot of disastrous undefined behavior.

[inquisitor27552]

40 yrs jeez.

question sir, why not rust or typescript or python? what makes you want golang?

[uaas]

One can only learn these languages after 40 years, or what is your actual point?

[inquisitor27552]

guy has 40 yrs experience

in his 40yr career im asking what makes him want golang over rust ts and python, maybe he sees something that my 10yo xp ass dont which can make me want to try golang

the downvotes are funny, are people here really anal about their age lol