Learning Day 1: go

This is the first Learning Day Log I’m publishing, and it’s about Go.

In December I decided to do Learning Days once a month; a sort of home conference that lasts at most a few hours instead of a few days. Part of this is because it’s difficult for me to plan travel with small children; part of it is because conferences are expensive; part of it is that conferences are a very mixed bag and I want to control what I can.

I had a tough time planning out my first Learning Day, so I fell back on doing something easy and planning a Learning Day on Go, which I use most days at work. The following was what I watched (in the order I watched them:)

SQLite and Go: Inspiring; I’ve long loved SQLite and have been intrigued by the idea of scaling down tech giants.
Static Analysis in Go: Interests me because I have a tool in mind.
Brad Fitzpatrick Go 1.11 and beyond: Fun, but maybe a waste of time? I am ok with wasting time as long as I’m insired though; I think the main issue for me here is that I’m well aquainted with all the stuff that was discussed in this talk.
Stupid Gopher Tricks: Excellent talk about weird ways to use Go.
7 common mistakes in Go and when to avoid them by Steve Francia: Good talk on mistakes to avoid.
Go with Versions: Personally this was way too in the weeds relating to something I’ve been able to ignore.

I almost suggest that everyone watch the first video. I don’t know how I got so lucky picking it and watching it first. Very good.

If you write Go or might write Go in the future, I suggest watching the second one; it’s a little tough to understand due to the speaker’s accent, but it gives a good overview of how you might leverage static analysis for (and in) Go.

Finally, if you already write Go, or are just learning Go, I suggest watching Stupid Go Tricks. It’s a good talk with some really good explanations of some of the linguistic nuance that we often miss.

(The following includes affiliate links.)

If you don’t already know Go, you should definitely check out The Go Programming Language. It’s not just a great Go book but a great programming book in general with a generous dollop of concurrency.

Another book to consider learning Go with is Go Programming Blueprints. It has a nearly interactive style where you write code, see it get syntax errors (or whatever,) fix it, and iterate. A useful book that shows that you don’t have to get all of your programs perfectly working on the first compile.

Posted Sat, Jan 26, 2019

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