Author Intro

i must admit to resisting learning Go for many years. the language is different enough from both Java and C++ that i didn’t feel comfortable in it. also, it’s on the wrong side of the tabs-vs-spaces war — tabs? really?!?

i have grown to appreciate the language as a nice middle ground between Java and C. it has built-in support for important data types like maps and strings. it has the garbage collection of Java. it also has the concepts of pointers from C without the complication of pointer arithmetic. its approach to objects is much simpler than C++ and even Java. Python programmers will enjoy the duck typing that Go uses. and it’s compiled!

this is a mediocre Go book to get a Java programmer to the level of a mediocre Go programmer quickly. i hope after reading this book, you will be motivated to learn Go thoroughly with other Go books and some nice war stories of your own.

i’ve learned a lot about Go writing it – Claude is fantastic at identifying concepts that need to be mentioned as well as checking text and code for errors. the first dozen chapters should give you a good start into using Go. many programmers may find up to the Essential Standard Library chapter to be all they need to continue with Go on their own.

i hope this book will help you get a new perspective of how to approach problems the go way and add another language to tackle problems with.

may the source be with you!