How to Learn Go (golang)

• Start with the Tour (do the next two steps also if you want to run the tour locally - see https://github.com/golang/tour)
• Be sure to set up GOPATH correctly - How to Write Go Code and a video
• Install from source. You can then use 'hg update release' for the release version or 'hg update tip' to get new bugfixes and features (recommended).
  • Don't forget "go get golang.org/x/tools/cmd/..."
  • You now need go1.4 to compile go1.5+. See below for runing 'tip' in git.
  • What's Happening in Go tip
• See also the one-pager Learn Go in Y Minutes
• Use hgview to browse the source repository.
• Use gitk to browse the source repository. Reading the diffs is educational.
• play.golang.org is the go equivalent of typing 'python' and then just noodling around, but it's better because you can save a snapshot and send the link to someone else.
• x := someFunction() is easy, but if you want to know what type x is while debugging, use fmt.Printf("%#v", something) - (example)
• go fmt your code with the current go-mode.el. More Using Go with Emacs
• Control-\ (backslash) will sent a SIGQUIT to quit your program and dump the stack of all running goroutines.
• New doc tool - "go get code.google.com/p/rspace.cmd/doc"
• Dave Cheney's list of resources for learning Go
• You can easily cross-compile any go program that's pure go (doesn't link to C libs using cgo).
• Use "go vet" and golint
• Nate Finch's tips for newbie gophers.

• The Go Programming Language should be your first stop. K&D instead of K&R
• Programming in Go by Mark Summerfield is well-written, has lots of useful tables, and detailed cross-references. It starts off with examples, but each example has links to the pages where more detail is explained. I've given two copies to friends, and one described it as one of the only tech books he can just read for fun. The first chapter is available free.
• Practical Cryptography With Go by Kyle Isom (But see criticism)

Videos

• Google I/O 2012: Concurrency Patterns in Go
• A Tour of Go
• (and lots more - e.g. videos from Google I/O 2012)

More Documentation

• GoPkgDoc will crawl repositories and auto-generate web-based docs for you.
• The Go Wiki has a lot of useful tips (e.g. SliceTricks)
• In Go 1.1 (currently tip), there is a Race Detector, explained as part of this article on concurrency.

Super-Useful Libraries

• On tip, the 'exp' package had things under it, like html and unicode, but this has moved to go.exp
• go.crypto and go.net
• go.image and build status
• go.text
• go.exp (goget code.google.com/p/go.exp/inotify)
• glog logging levels

More Go Reading

• Reddit - http://www.reddit.com/r/golang
• Google+ Golang account
• Go+ Community on Google+
• go-nuts is easier to read if you send it to your gmail account with a rule to label and auto-archive out of your inbox, then you can browse and search it much more easily.
• cat-v.org has lots more links to follow.

Esoterica

• Show escaping variables - "go build -gcflags -m"

Running From Git master

• mkdir ~/golang
• cd ~/golang
• <git clone of "go" from source link above>
• git checkout go1.4.3 # or whatever 1.4 is current
• cd go/src
• export CGO_ENABLED=0
• ./all.bash
• cd ~/golang
• mv go go1.4
• <git clone of "go" from source link above>
• cd go/src
• export GOROOT_BOOTSTRAP=/home/user/golang/go1.4
• ./all.bash
• cd ~/golang
• mv go go-master
• ln -s go-master go