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)

About goroutines

A goroutine is the minimum Go entity that can be executed concurrently. Note that the use of the word minimum is very important here because goroutines are not autonomous entities. Goroutines live in threads that live in Unix processes. Putting it simply, processes can be autonomous and exist on their own, whereas both goroutines and threads cannot. So, in order to create a goroutine, you will need to have a process with at least one thread. The good thing is that goroutines are lighter than threads, which are lighter than processes. Everything in Go is executed using goroutines, which makes perfect sense since Go is a concurrent programming language by design. As you have just learned, when a Go program starts its execution, its single goroutine calls the main() function, which starts the actual program execution.

You can define a new goroutine using the go keyword...