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The Way to Go
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Gain insights into Go's core constructs, advanced concepts like error-handling and networking, and learn efficient programming techniques and common pitfalls in this popular language.

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Go (sometimes called Golang) is one of the most popular languages today, and is a key part of many enterprise tech stacks. Many developers prefer Go to other languages like C++ and Scala because of its memory management model which allows for easier concurrency. In this course, you will learn the core constructs and techniques of the language. After going through the basics, you will then learn more advanced Go concepts like error-handling, networking, and templating. You'll learn how to program efficiently in Go by gaining knowledge of common pitfalls and patterns, as well as by building your own applications.

Go (sometimes called Golang) is one of the most popular languages today, and is a key part of many enterprise tech stacks. Many ...Show More

TAKEAWAY SKILLS

Programming Language

Content

255 Lessons11 Quizzes19 Challenges

Origin, Context and Popularity of GO

4 Lessons

Get familiar with Go's origins, purpose, key features, and its rise in popularity.

Origin and Evolution of Go

Reasons for Developing Go

Characteristics of Go

Test Yourself

Basic Constructs and Elementary Data Types

16 Lessons

Grasp the fundamentals of Go's basic constructs, data types, pointers, and essential operations.

Filenames, Keywords and Identifiers

Import Functionality

Overview of Functions

Overview of Data Types

Challenge: Temperature Conversion

Solution Review: Temperature Conversion

Strings

Strings and strconv Package

Times and Dates

Pointers

Quiz: Deduce the Outputs

Control Structures

10 Lessons

Work your way through decision-making, error handling, looping constructs, and flow control in Go.

The if-else Construct

Testing for Errors on Functions

The switch-case Construct

Challenge: Season of a Month

Solution Review: Season of a Month

The for Construct

The for range Construct

Break and Continue

Use of Labels - goto

Exercise: Deduce the Outputs

Functions

19 Lessons

Enhance your skills in Go's functions, including recursion, closures, and optimization techniques.

Introduction to Functions

Parameters and Return Values

Challenge: Multiple Return Values

Solution Review: Multiple Return Values

Challenge: Variable Number of Arguments

Solution Review: Variable Number of Arguments

Defer and Tracing

Built-in Functions

Recursive Functions

Challenge: Compute Factorial of a Number

Solution Review: Compute Factorial of a Number

Higher-Order Functions

Challenge: Filter Even and Odd Numbers

Solution Review: Filter Even and Odd Numbers

Closures

Functions as Return Variables

Debugging with Closures

Optimizing Programs

Quiz: Deduce the Outputs

Arrays and Slices

27 Lessons

Explore Go arrays, slices, initialization, manipulation, and problem-solving techniques.

Declaration and Initialization

Array Literals and Parameters

Challenge: Filling Array with Loop Counter

Solution Review: Filling Array with Loop Counter

Challenge: Finding Fibonacci Numbers with Array

Solution Review: Finding Fibonacci Numbers with Array

Slices

Slices with Functions

Challenge: Finding Fibonacci Numbers with Slices

Solution Review: Finding Fibonacci Numbers with Slices

Multidimensionality

Bytes and Slices

The for-range Construct

Reslicing

Copying and Appending Slices

Challenge: Magnify a Slice

Solution Review: Magnify a Slice

Challenge: Inserting Slice in a Slice

Solution Review: Inserting Slice in a Slice

Challenge: Filtering with Higher-Order Functions

Solution Review: Filtering with Higher-Order Functions

Applying Strings, Arrays and Slices

Challenge: Bubble Sort the Slice

Solution Review: Bubble Sort the Slice

Challenge: Reverse a String

Solution Review: Reverse a String

Quiz: Deduce the Outputs

Maps

8 Lessons

Focus on using key-value pairs in maps, iterating, checking existence, and practical examples.

Declaration and Initialization

Existence of Key-Value Item

The for range Construct

Challenge: Map the Days

Solution Review: Map the Days

A Slice of Maps

Sorting and Inverting a Map

Quiz: Deduce the Outputs

Packages

12 Lessons

Build on using Go's standard library, custom packages, sync mechanisms, and external libraries.

Overview of the Standard Library

Challenge: Construct a Double-Linked List

Solution Review: Construct a Double-Linked List

The regexp Package

Locking and the sync Package

Accurate Computations and the big Package

Custom Packages and Visibility

Documenting Your Packages

Custom Packages: Folder Structure, go install and go test

Using git for Distribution

External Packages, Projects and Libraries

Installing External Packages

Structs and Methods

24 Lessons

Step through struct creation, advanced concepts, methods, and practical coding challenges.

Introduction to Struct

Advanced Structs Concepts

Factory Method

Structs with Tags

Anonymous Fields and Embedded Structs

Challenge: Anonymous Struct

Solution Review: Anonymous Struct

Introduction to Methods

Methods Versus Functions

Challenge: Coordinates of a Point

Solution Review: Coordinates of a Point

Challenge: Make a Rectangle

Solution Review: Make a Rectangle

Challenge: Decide Employee Salary

Solution Review: Decide Employee Salary

Receivers and Methods as Pointers and Values

Non-Exported Fields

String() Method and Format Specifiers

Methods on Embedded Types

Multiple Inheritance

Challenge: Implement Stack Data Structure

Solution Review: Implement Stack Data Structure

Garbage Collection and SetFinalizer

Quiz: Deduce the Outputs

Interfaces and Reflection

25 Lessons

Unpack the core of interfaces, reflection, type assertions, type switches, and generic programming in Go.

What is an Interface?

Challenge: Make a Simple Interface

Solution Review: Make a Simple Interface

Embedded Interface and Type Assertions

The Type Switch

Challenge: Advancing the Simple Interface

Solution Review: Advancing the Simple Interface

Implementation of Interfaces

Sorting with the Sorter Interface

Challenge: Advancing the Shapes Analysis

Solution Review: Advancing the Shapes Analysis

Challenge: Sort People with Sorter Interface

Solution Review: Sort People with Sorter Interface

Reading and Writing

Empty Interface

Challenge: Implement Miner Interface

Solution Review: Implement Miner Interface

The reflect Package

Printf and Reflection

Interfaces and Dynamic Typing

Structs, Collections and Higher-Order Functions

Challenge: Make a Stack with Variable Internal Types

Solution Review: Make a Stack with Variable Internal Types

The Object Orientation in Go

Quiz: Deduce the Outputs

10.

Reading and Writing

23 Lessons

Examine reading and writing operations in Go, including file handling, data serialization, and user input.

Reading Input from the User

Challenge: Analyzing Input from Keyboard

Solution Review: Analyzing Input from Keyboard

Reading from a File

Writing to a File

Challenge: Read CSV File

Solution Review: Read CSV File

Challenge: Writing to a WIKI Page

Solution Review: Writing to a WIKI Page

Copying Files

Reading Arguments from the Command-Line

Reading Files with a Buffer

Reading and Writing Files with Slices

Scanning Inputs

A Practical Example of Interfaces

The JSON Data Format

Decoding with JSON

The XML Data Format

Data Transport through gob

Challenge: Decode the Contents

Solution Review: Decode the Contents

Cryptography with Go

Exercise: Deduce the Outputs

11.

Error-Handling and Testing

13 Lessons

Grasp the fundamentals of Go's error-handling, testing practices, and performance optimization.

Error-Handling

Run-time Exceptions and Panic

Recover

Error-Handling and Panicking in a User-Defined Package

Error-Handling Scheme with Closures

Challenge: Generate Panic from Division by 0

Solution Review: Generate Panic from Division by 0

Starting an External Command or Program

Testing and Benchmarking in Go

Testing: A Concrete Example

Using Table-Driven Tests

Investigating Performance

Exercise: Deduce the Outputs

12.

Goroutines and Channels

29 Lessons

Deepen your knowledge of Go's concurrency through goroutines, channels, patterns, and synchronization.

Handling Concurrency and Parallelism with Go

Implementing Goroutines

Introduction to Channels

Synchronous and Asynchronous Communication

Challenge: Demonstrate the Blocking Nature

Solution Review: Demonstrate the Blocking Nature

Semaphore Pattern

Channel Factory and Producer-Consumer Pattern

Challenge: Summing the Integers

Solution Review: Summing the Integers

Channel Directionality

Synchronization of goroutines

Switching between goroutines

Challenge: Devise Random Bit Generator

Solution Review: Devise Random Bit Generator

Challenge: Map Polar Points to Cartesian Points

Solution Review: Map Polar Points to Cartesian Points

Channels, Timeouts, and Tickers

Using recover with goroutines

Tasks and Worker Processes

Implementing a Lazy Generator

Anonymous Closure

Implementing Futures

Multiplexing

Limiting the Number of Requests

Chaining and Parallelizing Computation

The Leaky Bucket Algorithm

Benchmarking, Accessing and Listening

Exercise: Deduce the Outputs

13.

Networking, Templating and Web-Applications

15 Lessons

Focus on creating Go-based web applications, handling servers, and integrating cloud services.

A TCP Server

A Simple Web Server

Polling Websites and Reading Web Page

Writing a Simple Web Application

Challenge: Web Application for Statistics

Solution Review: Web Application for Statistics

Making a Web Application Robust

Writing Web Application with Templates

Exploring the template Package

Challenge: Web Application for Serving Guests

Solution Review: Web Application for Serving Guests

An Elaborate Web Server

Remote Procedure Calls with RPC

Sending Mails with SMTP

Go in the Cloud

14.

Common Go Pitfalls and Patterns

5 Lessons

Piece together the parts of common Go pitfalls and effective programming patterns.

Regular Mistakes and Suggestions

Highlights from the Previous Chapters

The comma, ok Pattern

The defer Pattern

Visibility and Operator Patterns

15.

Performance Advices

5 Lessons

Sharpen your skills in optimizing Go performance with strings, structs, functions, goroutines, and memory management.

Strings, Arrays and Slices

Structs, Interfaces and Maps

Functions and Files

Goroutines and Networking

Suggestions and Considerations

16.

Building a Complete Application

7 Lessons

Develop the URLShortener app "goto" with data storage, concurrency, persistent storage, and distributed architecture.

Introduction

Setting up the Structure of Application

Our User Interface

Persistent Storage with gob

Using goroutines for Performance

Persistent Storage with JSON

Enhancements

17.

Appendix

13 Lessons

Work your way through Go installation, workspace setup, debugging, and performance optimization tools.

Platforms and Architectures

Installing Go and the Go Tools-Chain in Binary Format

Installing Go from Source

Go Work Environment

Basic Requirements for a Go Environment

Editors and Integrated Development Environments

Debugging

Formatting the Code

Building and Running Go-Programs

Searching for Help and Documenting the Code

Tools and Go's Performance

Interaction with C and C++

Helpful Resources

Certificate of Completion

Showcase your accomplishment by sharing your certificate of completion.

Course Author:

Ivo Balbaert

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