Introduction to Go: Basics, Concurrency, Channels, and Common Constructs

The article introduces the Go programming language, highlighting its simplicity, speed, safety, and built‑in concurrency features.

It explains how to start a goroutine with the go functionName(args) syntax and provides a sample program demonstrating concurrent execution:

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "time"
)

func say(s string) {
    for i := 0; i < 5; i++ {
        time.Sleep(100 * time.Millisecond)
        fmt.Println(s)
    }
}

func main() {
    go say("test")
    say("hello")
}

Channels are presented as a means for goroutine communication, showing send ( ch <- v) and receive ( v := <-ch) operations, channel creation, buffered channels, and iteration with range, including examples of closing channels:

ch := make(chan int)
ch <- 5
v := <-ch // receive

// buffered channel
ch := make(chan int, 100)

// range over channel
for i := range c {
    fmt.Println(i)
}

The guide covers Go installation on Linux, FreeBSD, macOS, and Windows, basic syntax rules, data types (bool, numeric, string, and derived types), variable and constant declarations, operators, control structures, loops, functions, scopes, arrays, and error handling using the error interface:

type error interface {
    Error() string
}

func Sqrt(f float64) (float64, error) {
    if f < 0 {
        return 0, errors.New("math: square root of negative number")
    }
    // implementation
}

Finally, it lists popular Go development tools such as IntelliJ IDEA with Go plugins, GoLand, LiteIDE, and Eclipse.