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Go Programming Language

Go is an open source programming language that makes it easy to build simple, reliable, and efficient software.

Introduction

The Go programming language is a procedural programming language. It was created by Google's Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, and Ken Thompson in 2007 and released as an open-source programming language in 2009. Packages are used to construct programmes in order to manage dependencies efficiently. This language, like dynamic languages, facilitates environment adoption patterns. For example, type inference (y:= 0 is a legal declaration of a float variable y).

Beginning with Go programming

There are a number of online IDEs that may be used to run Go applications without installing them, including The Go Playground, repl.it, and others. We'll need the following two pieces of software to install Go on our own PCs or laptops: Compiler and text editor

Text Editor: You can write your source code on a text editor's platform. The list of text editors is as follows:

  • Windows notepad
  • OS Edit command
  • Brief
  • Epsilon
  • vm or vi
  • Emacs
  • VS Code

Finding a Go Compiler: Go is available as a binary for 32-bit (386) and 64-bit (amd64) x86 CPU architectures on FreeBSD (version 8 and higher), Linux, Mac OS X (Snow Leopard and above), and Windows operating systems. For additional information on how to install, click here.

Please visit For installing GO distribution : https://golang.org/doc/install

Note: The extension of a go language source code file must be .go

Writing first program in Go:

Program's Code:

package main 
  
import "fmt"
 
func main() {
 
     // prints World
     fmt.Println("Hello, World!")
}

Output:

Hello, World!

Explanation of the syntax of Go program:

Line 1: It contains the program's main package, which comprises the program's overall material. It is required to write because it is the first step in running the programme. Line 2: It contains the preprocessor command import "fmt," which informs the compiler to include the files in the package. Line 3: main function; this is where the programme begins to run. Line 4: fmt.Println() is a standard library function that allows you to print something to the screen.The Println method of the fmt package is used to display the output in this case.

Why this Go language?

Because the Go programming language attempts to combine the programming ease of an interpreted, dynamically typed language with the efficiency and safety of a statically typed, compiled language. It also aspires to be cutting-edge, with networked and multicore computer capabilities.

  • Go makes an effort to reduce typing in both senses of the word. The developers sought to keep clutter and complexity to a minimum during the development process.
  • There are no header files or forward declarations; everything is declared exactly once.
  • Simple type derivation using the:= declare-and-initialize construct reduces stuttering.
  • There is no type hierarchy: types are what they are, and they aren't required to declare their relationships.

Features of go language

Language Design: The language's designers made it a deliberate goal to keep the language simple and easy to grasp. The entire detailing is contained within a few pages, and the language's Object-Oriented capabilities was used to make some intriguing design decisions. To this aim, the language expresses an opinion and suggests an idiomatic approach. Composition is preferred above inheritance. The slogan in Go Language is "Do More with Less."

Package Management: Go incorporates the modern development process for dealing with Open Source projects into how it manages external packages. Support for getting external packages and publishing your own packages in a set of simple commands is built right into the tooling.

Powerful standard library: Go has a robust standard library that is available as packages.

Static Typing: Go is a statically typed programming language. As a result, this compiler not only focuses on properly compiling code, but also on type conversions and compatibility. Go avoids all of the issues that come with dynamically typed languages because of this feature.

Platform Independent: Go is similar to Java in that it supports platform independence. Because of its modular design and modularity (the code is built and transformed into binary form that is as little as feasible), it has no dependencies. Its code can be compiled on any platform, server, or application that you are working on.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Go Language

Advantages:

  • It is adaptable because it is concise, straightforward, and simple to read.
  • Concurrency allows several processes to execute at the same time and efficiently.
  • Its compilation time is quite short.
  • It comes with a large standard library.
  • Garbage collection is one of go's most important features. Go excels at giving you a lot of control over memory allocation, and the garbage collector in recent versions has substantially decreased latency.
  • It checks for type embedding and interface validation.

Disadvantages:

  • It does not support generics, despite the fact that there is a lot of talk about it.
  • Although the Go programming language comes with a number of useful packages, it is not object-oriented in the traditional sense.
  • Some libraries, particularly a UI toolkit, are missing.