Cloud Native Go

Chapter 3. Go Language Foundations

A language that doesn’t affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.¹

Alan Perlis, ACM SIGPLAN Notices (September 1982)

No programming book would be complete without at least a brief refresher of its language of choice, so here we are!

This chapter will differ slightly from the ones in more introductory level books, however, in that we’re assuming that you’re at least familiar with common coding paradigms but may or may not be a little rusty with the finer points of Go syntax. As such, this chapter will focus as much on Go’s nuances and subtleties as its fundamentals. For a deeper dive into the latter, I recommend either Introducing Go by Caleb Doxsey (O’Reilly) or The Go Programming Language by Alan A. A. Donovan and Brian W. Kernighan (Addison-Wesley Professional)

If you’re relatively new to the language, you’ll definitely want to read on. Even if you’re somewhat comfortable with Go, you might want to skim this chapter: there will be a gem or two in here for you. If you’re a seasoned veteran of the language, you can go ahead and move on to the next chapter (or read it ironically and judge me).

Basic Data Types

Go’s basic data types, the fundamental building blocks from which more complex types are constructed, can be divided into three subcategories:

• Booleans that contain only one bit of information—true or false—representing some logical conclusion or state.

• Numeric types that represent simple—variously sized floating ...