1 Go: Simple to learn but hard to master

Making mistakes is part of everyone’s life. As Albert Einstein once said,

A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.

What matters in the end isn’t the number of mistakes we make, but our capacity to learn from them. This assertion also applies to programming. The seniority we acquire in a language isn’t a magical process; it involves making many mistakes and learning from them. The purpose of this book is centered around this idea. It will help you, the reader, become a more proficient Go developer by looking at and learning from 100 common mistakes people make in many areas of the language.

This chapter presents a quick refresher as to why Go has become mainstream over the years. We’ll discuss why, despite Go being considered simple to learn, mastering its nuances can be challenging. Finally, we’ll introduce the concepts this book covers.

1.1 Go outline

If you are reading this book, it’s likely that you’re already sold on Go. Therefore, this section provides a brief reminder about what makes Go such a powerful language.

1.2 Simple doesn’t mean easy

1.3 100 Go mistakes

1.3.1 Bugs

1.3.2 Needless complexity

1.3.3 Weaker readability

1.3.4 Suboptimal or unidiomatic organization

1.3.5 Lack of API convenience

1.3.6 Under-optimized code

1.3.7 Lack of productivity

Summary