Best Golang Books to Learn Go programming

What is Golang?

Golang is a "statically typed compiled" programming language with inbuilt support for garbage collection and concurrent programming. It was designed at Google by Ken Thompson and their team and publicly released in Nov 2009 and used heavily at Google and many tech giants.

Golang features :

• Golang programs are simple, concise, and type-safe.
• Golang is a statically typed language.
• Golang is a compiled language.
• Golang performs automatic garbage collection.
• Golang comes with a powerful library that is distributed as a package.

Golang features not supported :

• No classes
• No constructor
• No inheritance
• No exception

Is Golang Hard to Learn?

Golang is generally easier to learn for beginners because it was developed by developers at Google. It also depends on the course and books you follow for learning go language. The answer to this question will vary from person to person since it depends on the individual as to how they learn and the difficulty may vary.

Best Golang Books to Learn Go Programming

Here are a few Best golang books to Learn Golang that you should consider if you are a beginner or anyone who wants to upskill their programing language by learning to go using these golang books.

1. Head First Go

It is one of the most structured books for learning the go language, written by Jay McGavren. The learner can get in-depth knowledge about the fundamentals of golang and can help understand the concepts much better along with examples since it has easy words and languages. The book comprises syntaxes and automated testing that helps you master the golang.

The graphical visualization of concepts and interesting examples makes this book, even more, beginner friendly. Besides all this, the book includes the following information :

• This book has great concurrency support with automatic memory management.
• It also contains information about why golang removed structures with are prone to errors like classes, inheritance as well as exceptional handling.
• This book not only teaches the basic features of golang but also debugging errors, documentation, and search engine along with a solution to errors of output. Due to all these features, this book is most recommended for beginners.

2. The Go Programming Language

By using this book, developers will surely understand how to work and handle real-life errors related to coding. It is suitable for both, beginners who have just started programming and advanced or experienced levels since it covers right from the fundamentals to the advanced level. This book explains the concepts like syntaxes, data structure, data types, libraries, I/O operations, and processing, etc. This book is amongest one of the most-read books of golang and was written by Alan A. A. Donovan and Brian W. Kernighan in 2015. Following are the key elements that this book drives toward :

• This book will guide developers through every approach by providing a proper explanation of every approach at the end of every unit, irrespective of whether you have prior knowledge of programming languages like JavaScript, Java, Python, C/C++, Ruby, etc.
• It also consists of programs like hello world, basic common line arguments, animated gifs, finding duplicate lines in code, etc.
• For making a good grip on automated testing, it provides a go’s test tool, test functions as well as coverage and benchmark functions, profiling, functions example, etc.

3. Go into Action

The Go into action book is primarily crafted for developers who want an in-depth knowledge of Golangg’s main features and basic concepts or fundamental ideas that helps developers in implementing those in the real-life world. It was written by William Kennedy, Brian Ketelsen, and Erik St. Martin was published back in the year 2015. It also provides a roadmap for beginners to learn golang which makes it suitable for newbies or beginners who want to learn golang.

Fundamental Concepts like the syntax of golang, concurrency, and controls, as well as the type channels, are explained in a very conceptualized manner in this book. Now that we know what this book comprises, let’s look at some of the key components or elements that this book consists of :

• This book is beginners friendly assuming that the learner is aware of other programming languages like java, python, c++, etc.
• For every concept, a live, real-life example is given to make the concept understand better.
• This book covers everything about golang’s system, the specification of this language and its implementation, data structures, testing benchmarking, etc.

4. Concurrency in Go: Tools and Techniques for Developers

It is a concept that is introduced for providing a practical experience to developers who know Go programming. This book is mostly for developers who are looking to enhance their skills in golang along with an example and hands-on sections. This book is written by Katherine, a computer scientist, and published the first edition in 2017. The reader will get to learn various concepts and will understand the difference between concurrency control and the concept of parallelism and many other difficult concepts easily by reading this book. Here are a few factors as to why should you consider this golang book :

• In this book, the author has depicted how golang addresses fundamental problems like concurrency properly.
• It also focuses on the important skills and tools that you need to write and perform concurrent system and implement it.
• It also covers large-scale distributed systems that can be scaled using golang.

5. Introducing Go: Build Reliable, Scalable Programs

As the name suggests, this book is perfect for beginners who are trying to learn golang. It covers all the basic concepts that a beginner should have ranging from, variables, data types, and looping or control structures. It also explains other concepts such as slices data structure, functions in golang, structs also known as structs, and interfaces. The writer has explained all these complex concepts in an easy-to-understand language which is why it is one of the most popular books of golang.

Here are a few features of this book :

• This book will cover all the important concepts of golang like an introduction to golang, the types of systems, golang variables, loop and control structure of golang, functions, and methods, packages, testing in golang, etc.
• The readers will also learn how to execute go programs concurrently with the help of channels and goroutines.
• It will also help the developers to learn and understand the core library of golang as well as how to make their own go package.

6. Hands-on Go Programming (English Edition)

This book is perfect for anyone who is looking to learn the golang programming language. This book will make you understand all the basic/fundamental concepts required to learn golang like Data types in golang, Constants and their uses, Variables in golang, types of Operators, Reassignment, etc. This book will also cover concepts like Functions and methods, the use of Control flows and loops, data structures like Arrays, Slices, Maps, and the use of Structs which are very important from the developer's point of view. This book was written by Sachchidanand Singh, and Prithvipal Singh and was published in 2021. Here are the following key elements of this book :

• This book is crafted for developers who are working in the cloud or networking domain along with DevOps since it covers all the design concepts too.
• This book has very well explained the fundamentals of golang along with advanced concepts which are crucial from the developer's perspective.
• It covers in-depth knowledge of syntaxes, control structures, and Error Handling, and learns to declare, create and modify Slices, Maps, and Struct along with examples.