Preface

Everything changes and nothing remains still.

Heraclitus

While traveling Europe in 2005, Nathan heard rumblings of a new web framework called Ruby on Rails. Returning to Alberta in time to celebrate Christmas, he found a copy of Agile Web Development with Rails (Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2005) at the computer bookstore downtown. Over the next two years, he transitioned his career from Cold-Fusion to Ruby.

At university in York, England, Roger was introduced to the radical simplicity of Bell Labs Research UNIX and the Plan 9 OS produced by the same group, which included Go authors Rob Pike and Ken Thompson. Roger became a fan and later worked with the Inferno system, which used its own language, Limbo, a close ancestor of Go.

In November 2009, Go was announced as an open source project. Roger immediately saw its potential and started using it, making contributions to its standard library and ecosystem. He remains delighted by Go’s success, now programs in Go full time, and runs a local Go meetup.

Nathan watched Rob Pike’s tech talk announcing Go but didn’t give Go a serious look until 2011. When a coworker spoke highly of Go, Nathan decided to read through a rough cut of The Go Programming Language Phrasebook (Addison-Wesley Professional, 2012) over Christmas break. Over the next few years, he went from using Go on hobby projects and blogging about Go (nathany.com) to organizing a local Go meetup (edmontongo.org) and writing Go at work.