The Internet is a place of constant evolution and creation. Nearly every day, web developers have new tools available to add to their repertoire. In recent years, though, few have been as influential as the Go programming language. Originally created at Google to solve system administration problems, Go has evolved into a modern, powerful, and well-adopted language. To call Go just a language would be a disservice, however; Go is more than a languageβitβs an entire ecosystem. From the tools that come with it, to the community of developers that build on it, Go is a force majeure in the web development world and it is here to stay.
So what is Go? Well, itβs a combination of a strongly typed programming language, and a collection of tools that make working with the language a pleasure. While many may consider a language to comprise merely the syntax, the tools provided to aid development are just as importantβif not more soβas the language itself. I hope that as you work through this book youβll see this for yourself, and learn to love Go as I do.
The topics covered in this book are targeted at web development. While Go wasnβt created as a βlanguage for web development,β it was produced with such a powerful and diverse standard library that web developers have taken to the language in droves, with many organizations now having Go applications powering their services. In this book, we wonβt be covering every aspect of the standard library; instead we'll be diving deeply into how to create fast, powerful, and maintainable web applications.