Chapter 1. Introducing Go
In this chapter
- Solving modern computing challenges with Go
- Using the Go tools
Computers have evolved, but programming languages haven’t kept up the same pace of evolution. The cell phones we carry might have more CPU cores than the first computer we used. High-powered servers now have 64, 128, or even more cores, but we’re still programming using the techniques we were using for a single core.
The art of programming has evolved too. Most programs aren’t written by a single developer any more: they’re written by teams of people sitting in different time zones and working at different times of the day. Large projects are broken up into smaller pieces and assigned to programmers who then deliver their work back to the team in the form of a library or package that can be used across an entire suite of applications.
Today’s programmers and companies believe more than ever in the power of open source software. Go is a programming language that makes sharing code easy. Go ships with tools that make it simple to use packages written by others, and Go makes it easy to share our own packages too.
In this chapter you’ll see how Go is different from other programming languages. Go rethinks the traditional object-oriented development you might be used to, while still providing an efficient means for code reuse. Go makes it easier for you to effectively use all of the cores on your expensive server, and it takes away the penalty of compiling a very large project.