Chapter 1, A First Step in Go, the reader is introduced to Go at a high-level and take a tour of the features that have made the language a favorite among its adopters.

Chapter 2, Go Language Essentials, this chapter starts with a deeper exploration Go’s syntax and other language elements such as source files, variables, and operators.

Chapter 3, Go Control Flow, examines Go program control flow elements including if, loop, and switch statements.

Chapter 4, Data Types, introduces its readers to Go’s type system including detail about built-in types, type declaration, and conversion.

Chapter 5, Functions in Go, discusses the characteristics of the Go function type including definition, assignment, variadic parameters, and closures.

Chapter 6, Go Packages and Program Structures, introduces readers to the organization of functions as a logical grouping known as packages and programs.

Chapter 7, Composite Types, this chapter continues the discussion Go types by introducing the reader to Go’s composite types such as arrays, slices, maps, and structs.

Chapter 8, Methods, Interfaces, and Objects, introduces the reader to Go idioms and features that can be used to create and compose object structures.

Chapter 9, Concurrency, introduces the reader to the topics of writing concurrent programs in Go using language constructs such as goroutines and channels.

Chapter 10, Data IO in Go, covers the built-in interfaces and APIs to achieve streaming input, output, and encoding of data.

Chapter 11, Writing Networked Services, explores the Go’s standard library for creating connected applications using covering topics from low-level TCP protocols to HTTP an RPC.

Chapter 12, Code Testing, here readers are introduced to Go’s inherent support and tools for code testing and benchmarking.

To follow the examples in this book, you will need Go version 1.6 or later.  Go supports architectures including AMD64, x386, and ARM running the following operating systems:

If you have prior exposure to programming and are interested learning the Go, this book is designed for you. While it assumes that you are familiar with concepts such as variables, data types, arrays, methods, and functions, the book is designed to allow you to follow chapter by chapter or skip around to the topics you want to learn about.

In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "Save the source code in a file called helloworld.go anywhere inside your GOPATH."

A block of code is set as follows:

package main
import "fmt"
func main() {
  fmt.Println("Hello, World!")
}

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

$> go version
go version go1.6.1 linux/amd64

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "If all goes well, you should see the message Hello, World! output on your screen.."

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