Book Image

Go Systems Programming

Book Image

Go Systems Programming

Overview of this book

Go is the new systems programming language for Linux and Unix systems. It is also the language in which some of the most prominent cloud-level systems have been written, such as Docker. Where C programmers used to rule, Go programmers are in demand to write highly optimized systems programming code. Created by some of the original designers of C and Unix, Go expands the systems programmers toolkit and adds a mature, clear programming language. Traditional system applications become easier to write since pointers are not relevant and garbage collection has taken away the most problematic area for low-level systems code: memory management. This book opens up the world of high-performance Unix system applications to the beginning Go programmer. It does not get stuck on single systems or even system types, but tries to expand the original teachings from Unix system level programming to all types of servers, the cloud, and the web.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)

Writing Programs in Go

This chapter will talk about many essential, interesting, and handy Go topics that will help you be more productive. I think it would be a good idea to start this chapter by compiling and running the Go code of the hw.go program from the previous chapter. Then, you will learn how to deal with the environment variables that can be used by Go, how to process the command-line arguments of a Go program, and how to print the output on the screen and get input from the user. Finally, you will see how to define functions in Go, learn about the extremely important defer keyword, look at the data structures that come with Go, and learn what Go interfaces are before checking out code that generates random numbers.

Therefore, in this chapter, you will become familiar with many Go concepts, including the following:

  • Compiling your Go programs
  • Go environment variables...