Some basic knowledge of Go is required to try the examples and to build modern applications.

Each chapter includes a set of questions that will help you to gauge your understanding of the chapter. The answers to these questions are provided in the Assessments section of the book. These questions will prove very beneficial for you, as they will help you revisit each chapter at a glance.

Apart from this, each chapter provides you with instructions on how to run the code files, while the GitHub repository of the book provides the requisite details.

You can download the example code files for this book from your account at www.packt.com. If you purchased this book elsewhere, you can visit www.packt.com/support and register to have the files emailed directly to you.

You can download the code files by following these steps:

1. Log in or register at www.packt.com.
2. Select the SUPPORT tab.
3. Click on Code Downloads & Errata.
4. Enter the name of the book in the Search box and follow the onscreen instructions.

Once the file is downloaded, please make sure that you unzip or extract the folder using the latest version of:

• WinRAR/7-Zip for Windows
• Zipeg/iZip/UnRarX for Mac
• 7-Zip/PeaZip for Linux

The code bundle for the book is also hosted on GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Hands-On-System-Programming-with-Go. In case there's an update to the code, it will be updated on the existing GitHub repository.

We also have other code bundles from our rich catalog of books and videos available at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/. Check them out!

We also provide a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. You can download it here: https://static.packt-cdn.com/downloads/9781789804072_ColorImages.pdf.

Visit the following link to check out videos of the code being run: http://bit.ly/2ZWgJb5.

In the course of the book you will find many snippets of code followed by a link to https://play.golang.org, a service that allows you to run Go applications with some limitations. You can read more about it at https://blog.golang.org/playground.

In order to see the full source code of such examples, you need to visit the Playground link. Once on the website, you can press the Run button to execute the application. The bottom part of the page will show the output. The following is an example of the code running in the Go Playground:

If you want, you have the possibility of experimenting by adding and editing more code to the examples, and then running them.

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

CodeInText: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: "This type of service includes load, which adds a program to memory and prepares for its execution before passing control to the program itself, or execute, which runs an executable file in the context of a pre-existing process."

A block of code is set as follows:

<meta name="go-import" content="package-name vcs repository-url">

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

Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see on screen. For example, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in the text like this. Here is an example: "In the meantime, systems started to get distributed, and applications started to get shipped in containers, orchestrated by other system software, such as Kubernetes."