Foreword

In computer science, when you think of exceptional people, a few names come to mind. Among them are Rob Pike, Robert Griesmier, and Ken Thompson, who are responsible for UNIX, Plan 9, B, Java’s JVM HotSpot, V8, Strongtalk, Sawzall, Ed, Acme, and UTF8, among many other creations. In 2007, they came together to experiment with a very powerful idea, combining their decades of experience to create a new systems language inspired by existing languages but truly unlike anything that came before. They released their creation as open source and named it “Go.” If Go continues on the course it is now on, it may indeed prove to be the most impactful of their many notable creations.

Humanity is at its best when people join together with the pure intention of making the world a better place. In 2013, Brian and Erik formed the Gopher Academy and were soon joined by Bill and a few other similar-minded people, united in the pursuit of building a better community around the Go language. They first noticed that the community needed a place to gather and share material online so they set up the Go discussion board (slack) and the Gopher Academy blog. As time went on and the community continued to grow, they established the world’s first global Go conference, GopherCon. Through their deep experience with the community, they knew that a resource was needed to guide the many thousands of programmers into this new language, so they began to write the book that you now hold in your hands.