Golang or Go programming language was introduced first by Google in late 2007 and was released in 2009 by Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, and Ken Thompson. It’s a free-to-use, open-source language that helps in making more reliable and effective software. There are approximately 1.1 million developers who opt for Go as their primary language. The reason behind this is Go is stable, clean, and more of an expressive programming language. Believe it or not, Go offers many simple and clean syntaxes that are way too similar to the C programming language.
Best Books to Learn Go Programming Language
Even today, when the world is highly using other programming languages, many big giants are still using Golang for their in-house usage, some of the big names are Soundcloud, Uber, Dropbox, etc. Considering the level of complexity in terms of learning, Golang is way easy to go along with it, especially for beginners and that’s why we’re here to help you find the 10 best books to learn Go programming language today. Let’s have a look at them:
1. Head First Go (1st Edition)
It’s one of the finest books to learn Golang, written by Jay McGavren. With the help of this, the reader can learn in-depth hand notes and examples for better understanding and clarity of words in each phase. The book consists of syntaxes, automated testing, and so on and it’s not wrong to say that you’ll probably enter the first level of mastery in Golang after reading this book.
The instinctive graphical representations and humorous examples make this book more interesting, especially for entry-level programmers. Besides this, this also includes the following details:
- This book contains great concurrency support and automatic memory management.
- The author of this book has specified the removal of error-prone language structures like class inheritance and exception handling.
- This book “Head First Go” will not only teach developers the basic features, but also will get them comfortable consulting error output, documentation, and search engines to find solutions to problems and that’s what probably makes it more suitable for beginners.
2. An Introduction to Programming in Go
This is one of the best books for beginners as it has all the resources that are useful for everyone who decides to learn the language. The book provides a good and fast introduction, nothing complicated and people who have no or very little experience will love this book. The author tried to keep it simple and concise with better explanations and examples so that the person reading can solve them simultaneously. The book has numerous things to learn such as:
- How to read the go program
- Types of numbers, strings, and booleans
- Concepts of variables
- Control structures
- Arrays, slices, and maps
- Various types of functions
3. The Go Programming Language (1st Edition)
With the help of this book, a developer will surely learn how to handle and work on real-life coding errors. It has no sign of any expertise to read this book, even beginners and advanced both can refer to this book to understand the core concepts of data types, syntax, libraries, I/O processing, and much more. This is one of the most-read books of Golang so far and was written by Alan A. A. Donovan and Brian W. Kernighan in 2015.
On the other hand, this book also drives through some of the key elements of go programming language which you need to look into:
- Whether you have prior knowledge of JavaScript, Ruby, Python, Java, or C++, this book will guide you through every single approach by providing a proper explanation at the end of every unit.
- The tutorial part of this book consists of Hello, world, Command-Line Arguments, Finding Duplicate Lines, Animated GIFs, and so on. In contrast, program structure, data types, and composite types are also well-defined into it.
- To make a tight grip on automation testing, it has the go test Tool, Test Functions, Coverage, Benchmark Functions, Profiling, and Example Functions for better understanding.
4. Go in Action (1st Edition)
This book is being crafted to take all the in-depth knowledge of Golang’s key features and conceptual ideas for implementing them in real-life scenarios. This book was written by William Kennedy, Brian Ketelsen, and Erik St. Martin and was published back in 2015. This book will drive all the paths of Go programming and is suitable for beginners.
All the syntax, concurrency, and type channels have been beautifully explained in this book by the author William Kennedy, who has been actively contributing to a very famous blog (GoingGo.net). On the other hand, let’s figure out some key elements of this book:
- As mentioned earlier, it is best for beginners but this book will assume that you’re a working developer proficient with another language like Java, Ruby, Python, C#, or C++.
- At every phase of content, a live example has been provided by the author so that readers can understand it in a much better way.
- This book is all about type systems, language specification & implementations, data structure (internal), testing benchmarking, and so on.
5. Concurrency in Go: Tools and Techniques for Developers
It was introduced with a concept to provide hands-on experience to those who have some knowledge of the Go programming language. In this book, skilled developers can brush up their knowledge with live examples in practice sections. This book was written by Katherine, a computer scientist, and published the first edition in 2017.
In this book, the reader will get to learn the key difference between concurrency and parallelism and also enable programmers to learn the sophistication behind goroutines and how Go’s runtime stitches everything together. Let’s see some other factors for considering this book if you’ve hands-on experience with Golang :
- The author has tried to make readers understand how Go addresses fundamental problems that make concurrency difficult to do correctly.
- This book entitles all the skills and tools you need to write and implement concurrent systems confidently.
- This book will drive you straight to code large distributed systems that can be scaled as per requirement.
6. Introducing Go: Build Reliable, Scalable Programs
The book itself is called an introduction and is suitable for entry-level programmers. This book was written by Caleb Doxsey in 2016 with the concept of offering a wide range of key knowledge of the basic structure of go programming, including data types, variables, and control structures. Whereas in other sections of this book, the author has also beautifully explained Golang programming types, such as slices, functions, structs, and interfaces. The author has picked so easy and layman terms in the book that it makes it one of the most demanding books for learning go programming language so far. Some other features of this book are as follows:
- The book will guide you through completing 11 units: Intro, type system, variables, control structure, functions, packages, testing, and so on.
- With the help of this book, the reader will get to learn how to run programs concurrently with goroutines and channels
- This book will also enable the developers to explore Go’s core library and learn how to create your package
7. Hands-on Go Programming (English Edition)
This is a perfect solution for those who are looking to uplift their skills in the Go programming language. However, this book will start with the basic concepts of Data types, Constants, Variables, Operators, Reassignment, and so on. Besides this, as you start moving forward, you’ll explore the use of Functions, Control flows, Arrays, Slices, Maps, and Structs using some great examples and illustrations.
This book was written by Sachchidanand Singh, and Prithvipal Singh and was published in 2021. Besides this, it also provides the key elements for the following:
- This book is well crafted for developers who are working in Cloud, Networking, and DevOps to learn Golang and can easily apply the knowledge gained to design and build solutions in their respective domains.
- In the basic part, this book will cover (data types, constants, operators, and variables) whereas in the other section i.e. advanced it will cover (interfaces, concurrency, pointers, error handling, etc.)
- This book will offer in-depth knowledge in syntaxes, control structures, and Error Handling, learn to declare, create, and modify Slices, Maps, and Struct, and that too with a handful of live examples and demos.
8. Get Programming With Go
Written by Roger Peppe and Nathan Youngman, Get Programming with Go has an easy introduction to computer programming using Golang. The book has numerous examples and exercises that will eventually help you to practice and remember what you have learned in the particular chapter or exercise. With the help of this book, you will also understand that this book helps in dealing with several functions and types along with different types of functions which will help you to explore concepts like concurrency and stats. You will also get to learn:
- Concepts like interface, pointers, slices, and concurrency
- Seven capstone projects featuring spacefaring gophers, Mars rovers, ciphers, and simulations
9. Mastering Go
It is an essential book for learning the Go language as it acts as a guide to gaining knowledge regarding real production systems. The third edition has been freshly updated and has topics like understanding Go generics, and developing gRPC servers and clients. and creating RESTful servers and clients. Mastering Go is one of the best-selling books for the Go language due to its advanced and expanded chapters with detailed explanations of things. This book is for programmers who want to master the Go language and gain deep knowledge about the subject. In this book, you will learn various things such as:
- Manipulation of data structure using arrays, maps, pointers, and slices
- Will help in writing high-performance concurrent code
- Use go-in production
- Helps in creating concurrent build RPC clients and servers
- Develop packages with interfaces and reflection
10. Build Systems With Go: Everything a Gopher Must Know
Build systems with Go is a complete package! With enhanced explanations, new chapters revised content, and amazing gophers this book offers complete explanations regarding every aspect of the Go language. There is a complete ecosystem that will make you move forward step-by-step and teach you how to build systems with the help of APIs, gRPC messaging, powerful loggers, middleware, SQL/NoSQL databases, data streaming, etc. In addition to this, you will also learn:
- Codes present on GitHub
- Learn the usage of modules, tags, CLIs, encodings, etc.
- Building of gRPC, Kafka, Cassandra, MySQL, Cobra, and more.
Must Read:
Conclusion
As technology evolves with time, new programming languages are being introduced. Some are complex and some are easy to use. GoLang is one of the easiest programming languages you can learn and these books can help to learn Golang without effort. You can decide how and from where to start learning. You should understand the importance of selecting the right resource before diving into it especially when the world is going digital in almost every industry.
FAQs
What is the best book to learn Golang?
Some of the best books to learn Golang are:
- An Introduction to Programming in Go
- Head First Go
- Introducing Go: Build Reliable, Scalable Programs
- Go in Action
- Concurrency in Go: Tools and Techniques for Developers
Is Go programming difficult to learn?
Golang is a straightforward language and easy to learn and the developers find it better than many other languages. Yet, it depends on how seriously you want to learn Go. It does not have a large feature set. Also, it is quite similar to C when talking about its syntax, which relatively makes it easy to learn.
Is Go better than Python?
Python is the most used programming language all over the world whereas Go is only a good way for crawling up the ladder. It depends on which domain you’re working on. When you’re working with data science and machine learning, Python is the best-suited programming language whereas Go is considered for system programming.
Is Golang a good career?
Golang has become a very famous programming language and is liked by everyone, especially among the people who work with Google products. Also, it is used in many big companies like Netflix, Uber, Medium, Salesforce, IBM, Twitter, etc. The salary of a GoLang developer may reach up to 20 lakhs as the experience increases.