Go also known as GoLang is an open-source programming language developed by Google. The flexibility, reliability, and fast compilation of Go are one of the main reasons why developers are so interested in learning this new language. Recently, it has gained a lot of popularity from projects ranging from simple web applications to system programming.
In this article, we’ll be going through a roadmap to becoming a GoLang Developer.
What is GoLang?
Go or GoLang is a statically typed, compiled, and open-source language developed by Google. It was developed by Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, and Ken Thompson and made public in 2009. GoLang was made open-source and available for all in the year 2012.
It gained popularity easily due to its features like readability, efficiency, concurrent nature, and garbage collection. Thus, Go is a good choice for hight scalable systems with large computational needs.
Features of Go or GoLang
- Simplicity: GoLang is very beginner-friendly and easy to learn and use.
- Concurrency Support: Concurrency is the feature to handle multiple threads at once. Go provides concurrency with the help of Goroutines instead of threads as they are lighter than threads. It also provides channels that provide communication between various Goroutines.
- Garbage Collection: This feature crosses out the need for a manual memory management system, thus memory leaks can be avoided.
- Testing: Go has a built-in Unit testing support making it easy to test your code.
- Fast Compilation: Go programs are easily parsable thus reducing the compile time of programs to seconds.
GoLang Developer
A GoLang developer is someone who creates code and software products in Go. It is considered a better alternative than other programming environments due to its easy-to-learn and highly scalable features.
Prerequisites for Becoming a GoLang Developer
Experience in the following is beneficial in order to have a successful career as a GoLang developer:
- Programming languages like Java
- Application design patterns and software
- Microservices like REST, SOAP etc
- Git and version control
- DevOps basics and practices
Why Become a GoLang Developer?
Being a simple and new language, the need to learn Go is high. It is an easy language to learn and is accompanied by detailed official documentation. Key characteristics of the language are:
- It does support polymorphism through interfaces.
- Inheritance(across classes and types) is not supported
- No dynamic libraries
- Does not support implicit-type conversion
Thus, the above characteristics make it an easy language to learn and master.
Salary Expectations
The average salary of a GoLang developer in India is ₹7,87,500 per year in India. The salary further varies on the level of expertise.
How To Become A GoLang Developer
Here is a step-by-step guide on how to become a GoLang developer.
Step 1: Learn the Basics of Go
In order to get a hold of the language, the first step is to familiarize yourself with the syntax and structure. Go through the following concepts thoroughly:
- Syntax – Having a simple structure and syntax similar to that of C proves to be a plus point for developers shifting from C to Go, but if you do not have prior experience with C, Go’s syntax is still easier to learn than other high-level languages.
- Variables and Datatypes – Learn about the data types that the language supports and how to initialize variables and functions and their parameter passing in Go. Knowledge about keywords and filename rules is also required.
- Control Flow – Understanding control flow in Go is important in order to make decisions and manage the program flow.
- Packages – Learn how to import packages to your code and how to use them efficiently. Go comes with a well-enriched standard template library.
- Data Structures – Learn about the various data structures supported by Go like an array, slices and maps and understand their application.
- Error Handling – Learn how Go handles situations of errors and how to use ‘error’, ‘recover’, ‘defer’ and ‘panic’ mechanisms
- Concurrency – Concurrency being the major feature of Go is an important concept to get a good grasp on. Learn about Goroutines, Channels and Buffer to write efficient concurrent code.
Using the knowledge gained by learning about the above concepts, write simple Go programs to get a hold of each concept before moving on to complex programs and projects.
Step 2: Get to Know Packages and Libraries
Go comes with a great standard library and apart from it, other third-party libraries can also be used.
- Go Standard Library – The standard Go Library is a set of core packages used to extend and enhance your application. Various packages included in the standard library are mathematics packages, networking packages, bytes and string-related packages, file and operating system-related system packages etc.
- Third-Party Libraries – To further enhance your application you can use third-party libraries. Gin can be used for web applications, Gorilla Mux is used for routing, GORM for database interactions, Viper for configuration management, Zap for logs and many more are some useful third-party libraries to learn about.
Import the packages required for your project, avoid any circular dependencies, keep the code clean and be careful while choosing a third-party library due to security concerns.
Step 3: Concurrency in Go
Concurrency being the key feature of Go it is important to get a good understanding of its concepts and patterns to write efficient Go code. It is the feature to manage multiple tasks efficiently. Looking into the elements of Go’s concurrency model in this step.
- Goroutines and channels – The basic elements of Go’s concurrency model are Goroutines and channels. Goroutines are light-weight user-level threads and channels are used for communication and synchronization between these goroutines.
- Concurrency patterns – Learn about concurrency patterns like fan-in, fan-out, producer-consumer patterns and more to get a clear understanding of concurrency.
- Race Condition and Deadlocks – Beware and learn to detect, prevent and remove deadlock and race conditions in your program.
Lastly, try to avoid minimizing code using shared state and use channels for communication and take hands-on experience with an implementation like concurrent task schedulers.
Step 4: Learn about Go Patterns
A list of design patterns is implemented in Go. Understanding them gives us knowledge of how Go solves common problems using repeatable and general solutions.
A. Creational Patterns
- Abstract factory
- Builder
- Singleton etc
B. Behavioural Patterns
- Chain of Responsibility
- Iterator
- Command etc
C. Structural Patterns
- Bridge
- Adapter
- Decorator etc
D. Concurrency Patterns
- Pipelines
- Cancellation
- Stability
Step 5: Testing and Debugging
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Testing – Go provides great tools to test and decode your program easily to ensure usability and reliability. Go’s built-in testing framework allows us to ensure code correctness using unit tests. Testing techniques include:
- Unit Testing
- Integration testing
- Behavior Testing
- E2E Testing
- Debugging – Apart from testing, debugging is also an important step in order to find the area of code where errors occur or are prone to errors. Tools like the ‘delve’ or ‘go run’ command can be used.
- Error Recovery – Go provides its own error recovery mechanisms like ‘panic’ and ‘recover’ mechanisms.
Step 6: Version Control and Build Projects
Version Control and collaborating with other developers is very important.
- Version Control – Learn about Git basics and set up Github/Gitlab. Initialize repositories and commit regularly. You can also contribute to others’ projects by collaborating with them or practising open-source contributions. Make sure to keep your commits small and focused with clear commit messages and rebasing branches.
- Build Projects – As a beginner start with small projects to clear your basics and then move to complex projects involving other domains such as RESTful APIs, automation scripts etc. Before starting to code any project plan and design the stages and features carefully and document each stage of the project as a best practice.
Finally, maintain a portfolio containing your projects using version control services like Github or Gitlab.
Step 7: Deployment and DevOps
The next step after creating projects is to learn how to deploy and use DevOps practices to make them more scalable and available.
- The first step is to learn to containerize using Docker by creating Docker images of your application.
- Next, choose a container orchestration tool such as Kubernetes to ensure high reliability and scalability.
- CI/CD Pipeline – Creating CI/CD pipeline to automate building, deployment and testing. Tools like Jenkins and Travis are good options to explore.
- Logging – Keep track of your application by incorporating logging and monitoring mechanisms into your application. Tools like Grafana can be explored for it.
Incorporating DevOps practices into your deployment maintains a production workflow, improves collaboration and makes the product more scalable and further improvements easier.
Step 8: Go Community
Stay updated with the latest updates on the language as it is a new language and is continuously under development.
- Stay active in the Go community
- Follow Go blogs and social media handles
- Join the Go Forum
- Participate in Go Conferences
- Contribute to open-source projects
- Contribute to the community by writing blog posts or improving the documentation.
Conclusion
In this article, we focused on the importance of learning GoLang and your roadmap to becoming a GoLang developer. It is not really necessary to follow the above steps as it is. Each individual has a different learning curve and you should learn accordingly keeping a raw roadmap(discussed above) in mind. Staying active in the Go community and contributing and building good projects is the best way to get a successful career.