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Introduction

1. History​

  • Go, also known as Golang, was created by Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, and Ken Thompson at Google in 2007 and was publicly released in 2009. The primary goal was to create a language that addressed shortcomings in other programming languages, especially in terms of concurrency, simplicity, and performance.

  • Go was designed with the intention to be fast, efficient, and easy to use, with a focus on simplicity and clarity. It combines the performance of low-level languages like C with the ease of use of higher-level languages like Python.

2. What is Golang?​

  • Go (often referred to as Golang) is an open-source programming language developed by Google.
  • Go is statically typed and has a rich set of standard libraries, along with built-in garbage collection.
  • It features a unique concurrency model using goroutines and channels, which allows efficient multi-threaded processing.
  • Go is widely used in backend development, cloud services, and large-scale systems.

3. Installation​

  • Go to the official Go download page: click here
  • Download the installer for your operating system (Windows, macOS, or Linux).

To check go version by running the following command.

go version

4. Go's basic syntax​

package main

import "fmt"

func main() {
fmt.Println("Hello, World!")
}
  • package main: Defines the package name. The main package is used for creating executable programs.
  • import "fmt": Imports the fmt package, which provides I/O functions.
  • func main(): The entry point of a Go program. The main function is executed when the program runs.
  • fmt.Println(): A function from the fmt package used to print text to the console.

5. Golang Keywords​

Golang has 25 reserved keywords, which are special identifiers with predefined meanings.

KeywordKeywordKeywordKeywordKeyword
breakcasechanconstcontinue
defaultdeferelsefallthroughfor
funcgogotoifimport
interfacemappackagerangereturn
selectstructswitchtypevar