Book Image

Hands-On GUI Application Development in Go

By : Andrew Williams
Book Image

Hands-On GUI Application Development in Go

By: Andrew Williams

Overview of this book

Go is often compared to C++ when it comes to low-level programming and implementations that require faster processing, such as Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs). In fact, many claim that Go is superior to C++ in terms of its concurrency and ease of use. Most graphical application toolkits, though, are still written using C or C++, and so they don't enjoy the benefits of using a modern programming language such as Go. This guide to programming GUIs with Go 1.11 explores the various toolkits available, including UI, Walk, Shiny, and Fyne. The book compares the vision behind each project to help you pick the right approach for your project. Each framework is described in detail, outlining how you can build performant applications that users will love. To aid you further in creating applications using these emerging technologies, you'll be able to easily refer to code samples and screenshots featured in the book. In addition to toolkit-specific discussions, you'll cover more complex topics, such as how to structure growing graphical applications, and how cross-platform applications can integrate with each desktop operating system to create a seamless user experience. By delving into techniques and best practices for organizing and scaling Go-based graphical applications, you'll also glimpse Go's impressive concurrency system. In the concluding chapters, you'll discover how to distribute to the main desktop marketplaces and distribution channels. By the end of this book, you'll be a confident GUI developer who can use the Go language to boost the performance of your applications.
Table of Contents (25 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
About Packt
Contributors
Preface
Comparison of GUI Toolkits
Index

Introduction


Go is a language that (like C, C++, Lisp, and many others) compiles to a native binary on every platform it supports. This is important for graphical applications as it's the best way to create the most responsive and smoothest user interfaces on mainstream computer hardware. At the time of writing, the platforms that Go runs on includes Windows, macOS, Linux, Solaris, and other popular Unix-based operating systems (which is essentially all desktop personal computers). What stands out about Go compared to other modern languages is that its source code will compile, without any alterations or special adaptation, to native code on every platform that it supports. The language also comprises a large library of APIs that fully support every one of its supported operating systems. This is a huge advantage for developers who want to write an efficient application for multiple operating systems without maintaining slightly different versions for each platform. Go is also a typed language...