Mastering Go: Unleashing the Power of Golang

Go, often referred to as Golang, is a statically typed, compiled programming language designed by Google. It was created to be efficient, readable, and productive for building reliable and scalable software systems. Go was developed with a focus on simplicity, performance, and concurrency.

What are the advantages of Go?

Some of the key advantages of Go:

  • It executes fast
  • Garbage collection
  • Simpler object-oriented features: No inheritance, no constructors, no generics
  • Efficient concurrency
    • Management of task execution through Goroutines
    • Communication between tasks through Channels
    • Synchronization between tasks through Select

Go folder structure

The top level of a Golang project is called a Workspace, this is the directory where all the Go files are stored. A common organization of the folder structure is recommended to enhance sharing. The following 3 subfolders are recommended for a workspace:

  • src: Contains the source code files
  • pkg: Contains libraries
  • bin: Contains the compiled executables

What is the Garbage collection in Golang?

Garbage collection is a set of different methods that handle the deallocation of objects that are no longer in use to recycle memory.

What does the “go” tool do?

The go tool is a command line tool used to perform several tasks in Go. These are some of its common uses:

  • go build: Compiles the program and creates an executable for the main package
  • go doc: Prints the documentation for a package
  • go fmt: Formats source code files
  • go get: Downloads packages and install them
  • go list: Lists all installed packages
  • go run: Compiles and runs the executable
  • go test: Runs tests using files ending in _test.go

How do you work with pointers in Golang?

A pointer is an address to data stored in memory. The & operator can be used to get the address of a variable or function, and the * operator can be used to return the data stored at that address.

What is a tagless switch in Golang?

A tagless switch is a construct that enables switch statements to be used as an alternative of long if-else statements. It’s named tagless because instead of the usual tag on the case it contains a conditional. Here’s an example:

switch {
 case x > 1:
  fmt.PrintF(“case1”)
 case x < -1:
  fmt.PrintF(“case2”)
 default:
  fmt.PrintF(“no match”)
}

When passing a struct as the argument on a function, which are good reasons to pass a pointer instead of the struct itself?

  • The struct is very large, so passing the struct itself would create an entire copy in memory
  • The function needs to modify the structure

What is a Variadic function in golang?

A Variadic function is a function which takes a varying number of arguments of one type. It is represented by ellipsis (3 dots …) followed by the data type.

func something(values …int) {
   for \_, v := range values {
       fmt.Println(n)
    }
}

References