Technically, Technical… Getting started, learning Go.
Why am I doing this?
I fell into working in tech by accident almost two years ago, and it was a very happy accident! And since then I’ve realised how much I’ve loved getting hands-on with the more technical side of my job. Even then, I’ve been technical(ish) at best. I realised that the way to become more technical and advance myself has been to learn to code. I still love to write about the technical stuff in user-friendly terms, but I couldn’t deny it would be even better to understand how to code, and how an application is produced, whether it’s me retrieving emails or accessing a webpage, or how the mythical cloud works! I once saw a cartoon that showed a user interface as a siren with the rear half of a dragon. Right now, that couldn’t seem more accurate as I try to do this.
So, I’m going to try to learn to code in Go (to start with), document it here to track my own progress, and hopefully, help anyone who reads this to do the same thing. In the mean time, I may also post blogs about other things this has taught me along the way.
Why Go?
I’d been told that Go was a straightforward language to start with, and brilliantly supported. Obviously at the end of this I’ll provide you with a full list of what I’ve read to get to support this as a newbie. The brainchild of Google engineers, Go has been designed to focus on simplicity, readability and performance which is a big deal for software engineering. There’s always been a trade off when it comes to simplicity and performance, but Go seems to have found a happy medium.
So, here goes. If you will!
To get started, you’ll need an editor, I’ve chosen Visual Studio, with it downloaded (click here for the link), I added the Go plugin. The interface is the same regardless of whether you use Mac or Windows, so here’s how it’s done.
- Download and install Visual Studio
- Go to View > Extensions
- Search ‘Golang’
- Hit install on the lukehoban authored extension
And you’re ready to write some code!
So, my next blog is going to take you through Visual Studio, to get yourself acquainted with the tool, and to start writing a basic Go application.
