Go is a statically typed, compiled, open source programming language designed by Google and first appeared in 2009.

Go is very popular for server-side projects, but it is also very popular for writing CLIs because the binaries can be statically linked.

Compiled - code is compiled ahead of execution.

Statically typed - value types are defined in advance.

Go is especially popular for building scalable web servers but also great for automation scripts and command-line programs. Not good at games and desktop apps.

Go tries to combine the best of C++, Java and Python.

Here are some projects that come to mind, which are entirely written in Go:

• Docker - a container engine written by Docker Inc
• Kubernetes - a clustering system for containers built by Google and open source contributors
• Terraform, Consul - tools for managing infrastructure built by HashiCorp
• Traefik - a load-balancer built by Traefik Labs
• Caddy - a high performance HTTP server written by Matt Holt
• OpenFaaS - serverless framework for hosting your own functions, built by OpenFaaS Ltd

Go has an impressive set of packages available within its standard libraries or stdlib. There are many useful packages and utilities that would need to be installed separately in a programming language like JavaScript, Ruby or Java.

• crypto - libraries for X.509 certificates and cryptography
• compress - work with zip files and archives
• http - a very powerful and simple HTTP client and server package including things like reverse proxies
• net - work directly with sockets, URLS and DNS
• encoding/json - work directly with JSON files
• text/template - a powerful templating engine for replacing tokens in files, and generating text and HTML
• os - work with low level OS primitives

Go (or Golang) is a statically typed language, meaning that variables must be declared with a specific type and that type cannot change during the execution of the program. Here are some of the basic data types in Go:

1. Numeric Types:

   • int: Signed integer types (int8, int16, int32, int64)
   • uint: Unsigned integer types (uint8, uint16, uint32, uint64)
   • float32 and float64: Floating-point types

2. String Type:

   • string: A sequence of characters

3. Boolean Type:

   • bool: Boolean values (true or false)

4. Composite Types:

   • array: A fixed-size sequence of elements of the same type
   • slice: A dynamically-sized, flexible view into the elements of an array
   • map: A collection of key-value pairs
   • struct: A composite data type that groups together variables under a single name

5. Pointer Types:

   • pointer: A variable that stores the memory address of another variable

6. Function Types:

   • func: A function type denotes the set of all functions with the same parameter and result types.

7. Interface Types:

   • interface: A set of method signatures. Interfaces allow you to define a contract for types that implement the methods.

8. Channel Types:

   • chan: A communication channel used for goroutine communication and synchronization

Books: Everyday Golang - The Fast Track