Conclusion. Where to Go from here

This concludes Get Programming with Go, but it’s not the end of your journey. We hope your mind is full of ideas and a desire to keep learning and building. Thanks for joining us.

Under the radar

Go is a relatively small language, and you’ve already learned most of it. There are a few edges that Get Programming with Go doesn’t cover in this edition:

• It doesn’t cover declaring sequential constants with the handy iota identifier.
• It doesn’t mention bit shifting (<< and >>) and bitwise operators (& and |).
• Lesson 3 covers loops but skips the continue keyword and jumps over the goto keyword and labels.
• Lesson 4 covers scope but not shadow variables—those shadowy characters.
• Lessons 6 through 8 crunch floating-point, integer, and big numbers but not complex or imaginary numbers.
• Lesson 12 shows the return keyword, but not bare returns—modesty is a virtue.
• Lesson 12 mentions the empty interface{}, but only briefly.
• Lesson 13 introduces methods but not method values.
• Lesson 28 mentions type assertions but not type switches.
• Lesson 30 doesn’t mention directional channels.
• It doesn’t explain initialization with init, a special function like main.
• It doesn’t detail every built-in function, such as new for pointers and copy for slices (see golang.org/pkg/builtin/).
• It doesn’t demonstrate writing new packages to organize code or to share with others.

Beyond the playground

If you’re new to computer programming, you may have appreciated the web-based Go Playground, but the playground has some limitations.

To break free of the Playground constraints and build the next cool thing, you’ll need to install Go on your computer (see golang.org/dl/). Launching the terminal or command prompt is a bit like hopping into a time machine. Learn to navigate your computer and run programs like it’s 1995!

You’ll also need a text editor. The authors of this book use Sublime Text and Acme, but there are many editors with good support for Go (see golang.org/doc/editors.html). Sooner or later, you’ll want a version control tool like git—which is a time machine, though only for code and other files.

And much more

Go is much more than a programming language. There’s a rich ecosystem of tools and libraries to be discovered.

Everything you need for automated testing, debugging, benchmarking, and much more is available. The standard library has many more packages to explore, and if you run out, the community of gophers has been busy making a huge assortment of third-party packages for any need (see godoc.org).

There are many online resources (see golang.org/wiki) to help you continue your journey, and dozens of gopher-friendly books, including Go in Practice, Go Web Programming, and Go in Action (see golang.org/wiki/Books).

There’s always more to learn, so join in the fun! The Go community welcomes you.