The Go Bestiary: Bugs, gotchas and guidelines for go programmers

The Go Bestiary provides a quick guide to allow a programmer who has some experience in other languages get started quickly in Go, while being aware of the idioms to use and areas where there might be bugs lurking in their new Go code. The book presents a mix of advice for structuring your Go programs and descriptions of common mistakes to avoid, with liberal code examples, to help ease you into using the Go programming language effectively. If you're familiar with Go but not an expert, hopefully there will also be a few interesting facts about the language you haven't yet uncovered, and some potential bugs which you might not be aware of. You may want to skip the sections on setup and packages in this case, as they will cover familiar ground. If you're new to Go, but experienced in other languages, you'll find succinct descriptions of the most important differences in Go which usually trip up learners (for example declaring strings, strings vs runes, copying slices, using goroutines within a for loop), descriptions of bugs which beginners often fall prey to, and plenty of detail about unique aspects of the language like goroutines and slices. Typically Go programmers get up to speed quickly and feel productive within days or weeks, but it can be harder to assimilate the culture and be aware of the subtle problems that can occur, this book is here to help you get familiar with Go. The book covers the basics such as strings, structs, slices but also the more interesting corners of the language like implicit interfaces and channels, and contains advice as well as pointers on common problems.