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76 lines
6.8 KiB
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4 tips for learning Golang
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Arriving in Golang land: A senior developer's journey.
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In the summer of 2014...
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> IBM: "We need you to go figure out this Docker thing."
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> Me: "OK."
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> IBM: "Start contributing and just get involved."
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> Me: "OK." (internal voice): "This is written in Go. What's that?" (Googles) "Oh, a programming language. I've learned a few of those in my career. Can't be that hard."
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My university's freshman programming class was taught using VAX assembler. In data structures class, we used Pascal—loaded via diskette on tired, old PCs in the library's computer center. In one upper-level course, I had a professor that loved to show all examples in ADA. I learned a bit of C via playing with various Unix utilities' source code on our Sun workstations. At IBM we used C—and some x86 assembler—for the OS/2 source code, and we heavily used C++'s object-oriented features for a joint project with Apple. I learned shell scripting soon after, starting with csh, but moving to Bash after finding Linux in the mid-'90s. I was thrust into learning m4 (arguably more of a macro-processor than a programming language) while working on the just-in-time (JIT) compiler in IBM's custom JVM code when porting it to Linux in the late '90s.
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Fast-forward 20 years... I'd never been nervous about learning a new programming language. But [Go][1] felt different. I was going to contribute publicly, upstream on GitHub, visible to anyone interested enough to look! I didn't want to be the laughingstock, the Go newbie as a 40-something-year-old senior developer! We all know that programmer pride that doesn't like to get bruised, no matter your experience level.
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My early investigations revealed that Go seemed more committed to its "idiomatic-ness" than some languages. It wasn't just about getting the code to compile; I needed to be able to write code "the Go way."
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Now that I'm four years and several hundred pull requests into my personal Go journey, I don't claim to be an expert, but I do feel a lot more comfortable contributing and writing Go code than I did in 2014. So, how do you teach an old guy new tricks—or at least a new programming language? Here are four steps that were valuable in my own journey to Golang land.
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### 1. Don't skip the fundamentals
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While you might be able to get by with copying code and hunting and pecking your way through early learnings (who has time to read the manual?!?), Go has a very readable [language spec][2] that was clearly written to be read and understood, even if you don't have a master's in language or compiler theory. Given that Go made some unique decisions about the order of the **parameter:type** constructs and has interesting language features like channels and goroutines, it is important to get grounded in these new concepts. Reading this document alongside [Effective Go][3], another great resource from the Golang creators, will give you a huge boost in readiness to use the language effectively and properly.
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### 2. Learn from the best
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There are many valuable resources for digging in and taking your Go knowledge to the next level. All the talks from any recent [GopherCon][4] can be found online, like this exhaustive list from [GopherCon US in 2018][5]. Talks range in expertise and skill level, but you can easily find something you didn't know about Go by watching the talks. [Francesc Campoy][6] created a Go programming video series called [JustForFunc][7] that has an ever-increasing number of episodes to expand your Go knowledge and understanding. A quick search on "Golang" reveals many other video and online resources for those who want to learn more.
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Want to look at code? Many of the most popular cloud-native projects on GitHub are written in Go: [Docker/Moby][8], [Kubernetes][9], [Istio][10], [containerd][11], [CoreDNS][12], and many others. Language purists might rate some projects better than others regarding idiomatic-ness, but these are all good starting points to see how large codebases are using Go in highly active projects.
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### 3. Use good language tools
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You will learn quickly about the value of [gofmt][13]. One of the beautiful aspects of Go is that there is no arguing about code formatting guidelines per project— **gofmt** is built into the language runtime, and it formats Go code according to a set of stable, well-understood language rules. I don't know of any Golang-based project that doesn't insist on checking with **gofmt** for pull requests as part of continuous integration.
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Beyond the wide, valuable array of useful tools built directly into the runtime/SDK, I strongly recommend using an editor or IDE with good Golang support features. Since I find myself much more often at a command line, I rely on Vim plus the great [vim-go][14] plugin. I also like what Microsoft has offered with [VS Code][15], especially with its [Go language][16] plugins.
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Looking for a debugger? The [Delve][17] project has been improving and maturing and is a strong contender for doing [gdb][18]-like debugging on Go binaries.
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### 4. Jump in and write some Go!
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You'll never get better at writing Go unless you start trying. Find a project that has some "help needed" issues flagged and make a contribution. If you are already using an open source project written in Go, find out if there are some bugs that have beginner-level solutions and make your first pull request. As with most things in life, the only real way to improve is through practice, so get going.
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And, as it turns out, apparently you can teach an old senior developer new tricks—or languages at least.
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--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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via: https://opensource.com/article/18/11/learning-golang
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作者：[Phill Estes][a]
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选题：[lujun9972][b]
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译者：[译者ID](https://github.com/译者ID)
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校对：[校对者ID](https://github.com/校对者ID)
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本文由 [LCTT](https://github.com/LCTT/TranslateProject) 原创编译，[Linux中国](https://linux.cn/) 荣誉推出
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[a]: https://opensource.com/users/estesp
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[b]: https://github.com/lujun9972
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[1]: https://golang.org/
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[2]: https://golang.org/ref/spec
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[3]: https://golang.org/doc/effective_go.html
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[4]: https://www.gophercon.com/
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[5]: https://tqdev.com/2018-gophercon-2018-videos-online
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[6]: https://twitter.com/francesc
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[7]: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_BzFbxG2za3bp5NRRRXJSw
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[8]: https://github.com/moby/moby
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[9]: https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes
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[10]: https://github.com/istio/istio
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[11]: https://github.com/containerd/containerd
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[12]: https://github.com/coredns/coredns
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[13]: https://blog.golang.org/go-fmt-your-code
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[14]: https://github.com/fatih/vim-go
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[15]: https://code.visualstudio.com/
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[16]: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/languages/go
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[17]: https://github.com/derekparker/delve
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[18]: https://www.gnu.org/software/gdb/
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