Learning Go

If you're new to Go, we recommend you work through the tutorial. The language specification has all the details should you want to explore.

Once you've learned a little about the language, Effective Go will help you learn the style and idioms of programming in Go.

A Tutorial for the Go Programming Language

The first tutorial. An introductory text that touches upon several core concepts: syntax, types, allocation, constants, I/O, sorting, printing, goroutines, and channels.

Course Notes

Slides from a 3-day course about the Go programming language. A more thorough introduction than the tutorial.

Effective Go

A document that gives tips for writing clear, idiomatic Go code. A must read for any new Go programmer. It augments the tutorial and the language specification, both of which should be read first.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Answers to common questions about Go.

How to write Go code

How to write a new package and how to test code.

Codelab: Writing Web Applications

This codelab takes the reader through the creation of a simple wiki web application. It touches on structs, methods, file I/O, http, regular expressions, and closures.

Codewalks

Guided tours of Go programs.

Go for C++ Programmers

An introduction to Go for C++ programmers.

Non-English Documentation

Belarusian — Беларуская

Chinese — 中文

German — Deutsch

Japanese — 日本語

Korean — 한국어

Russian — Русский

References

Keep these under your pillow.

Package Documentation

The built-in documentation for the Go standard library.

Command Documentation

The built-in documentation for the Go tools.

Language Specification

The official Go Language specification.

Release History

A summary of the changes between Go releases.

The Go Memory Model

A document that specifies the conditions under which reads of a variable in one goroutine can be guaranteed to observe values produced by writes to the same variable in a different goroutine.

Videos and Talks

Writing Web Apps in Go

A talk by Rob Pike and Andrew Gerrand presented at Google I/O 2011. It walks through the construction and deployment of a simple web application and unveils the Go runtime for App Engine. See the presentation slides.

Real World Go

A talk by Andrew Gerrand presented at Google I/O Bootcamp 2011. It gives a broad overview of Go's type system and concurrency model and provides four examples of Go programs that solve real problems. See the presentation slides.

Go Programming

A presentation delivered by Rob Pike and Russ Cox at Google I/O 2010. It illustrates how programming in Go differs from other languages through a set of examples demonstrating features particular to Go. These include concurrency, embedded types, methods on any type, and program construction using interfaces.

Practical Go Programming

This talk presents the development of a complete web application in Go. It looks at design, storage, concurrency, and scaling issues in detail, using the simple example of an URL shortening service. See the presentation slides.

The Go Tech Talk

An hour-long talk delivered by Rob Pike at Google in October 2009. The language's first public introduction. (See the slides in PDF format.) The language has changed since it was made, but it's still a good introduction.

gocoding YouTube Channel

A YouTube channel that includes screencasts and other Go-related videos:

The Expressiveness Of Go

A discussion of the qualities that make Go an expressive and comprehensible language. The talk was presented by Rob Pike at JAOO 2010. The recording of the event was lost due to a hardware error.

Another Go at Language Design

A tour, with some background, of the major features of Go, intended for an audience new to the language. The talk was presented at OSCON 2010. See the presentation slides.

This talk was also delivered at Sydney University in September 2010. A video of the lecture is available here.

Go Emerging Languages Conference Talk

Rob Pike's Emerging Languages Conference presentation delivered in July 2010. See the presentation slides. Abstract:

Go’s approach to concurrency differs from that of many languages, even those (such as Erlang) that make concurrency central, yet it has deep roots. The path from Hoare’s 1978 paper to Go provides insight into how and why Go works as it does.

The Go frontend for GCC

A description of the Go language frontend for gcc. Ian Lance Taylor's paper delivered at the GCC Summit 2010.

The Go Promo Video

A short promotional video featuring Russ Cox demonstrating Go's fast compiler.