For the Love of Go (2022 edition)

‘For the Love of Go’ is a book introducing the Go programming language, suitable for complete beginners, as well as those with experience programming in other languages.

This completely revised and updated edition includes the four mini-books previously released as ‘Fundamentals’, ‘Data’, ‘Behaviour’, and ‘Control’, plus for the first time complete solutions (with tests) to all the coding challenges in the book.

Throughout the book we'll be working together to develop a fun and useful project in Go: an online bookstore called Happy Fun Books!

Each chapter introduces a new feature or concept, and sets you some goals to achieve, with complete, step-by-step explanations of how to solve them, and full code listings with accompanying tests.

There are 24 chapters, and 215 pages (depending on the screen size of your ebook reader).

By reading this book and working through all the challenges and exercises, you'll learn:

How to write tests in Go and how to develop projects test-first

How to manage data in Go using built-in types, user-defined struct types, and collections such as maps and slices

How to use objects to model problems in Go, and how to add behaviour to objects using methods

How to use pointers to write methods for objects, and how to use types and validation to make your Go packages a delight to use

How to build powerful, flexible programs using control structures like loops and functions

Even more importantly, you’ll learn a simple, fun, and effective way to approach software engineering projects in Go. Even though the material is beginner-friendly, you’ll be mastering intermediate and advanced techniques such as test-driven development (TDD) and learning to design modules, packages, and APIs. These are essential skills in any modern software engineering role.