The first step in Golang( installation and hello world)

Glitch
3 min readMar 1, 2023

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Golang, also known as Go, is an open-source programming language developed by Google in 2009. It was designed to be a simple, efficient, and scalable language for building large-scale software systems. Some of the key features of Go include:

  • Fast compilation times
  • Garbage collection
  • Concurrency support through goroutines and channels
  • Strong typing and type safety
  • A simple and clean syntax

Here are some reasons why you should consider learning Golang:

  1. High-performance applications: Golang was designed with performance in mind, making it a great choice for building high-performance applications. It has a fast compilation speed and a runtime that is optimized for modern hardware.
  2. Concurrency: Golang has built-in support for concurrency through its goroutines and channels. This makes it easy to write concurrent programs, such as those that handle multiple requests or tasks simultaneously.
  3. Large-scale systems: Golang was designed to be a language for building large-scale systems, with features such as strong typing and garbage collection that help developers manage complex codebases.
  4. Open-source community: Golang has a growing and active open-source community, with many libraries and frameworks available for use. This makes it easy to find and use existing code to build your own applications.
  5. Cross-platform support: Golang can be compiled for multiple platforms, including Windows, macOS, and Linux, making it a versatile language for building applications that can run on a variety of systems.

In terms of real-world usage, Golang has been used by companies such as Google, Uber, Dropbox, and Netflix to build large-scale systems and applications. Some examples of popular applications built using Golang include Docker, Kubernetes, and Prometheus.

In this blog post, we will walk through the steps to install Go on your computer and create a simple “Hello, World!” program.

Installing Go

Before we can start coding in Go, we need to install it on our computer. Go can be installed on Windows, macOS, and Linux. In this tutorial, we will be using macOS as our example operating system.

  1. First, go to the official Go website (https://golang.org/) and download the installer for your operating system.
  2. Once the installer has downloaded, open it and follow the installation instructions.
  3. After the installation is complete, open your terminal and type go version. If Go is installed correctly, you should see the version number displayed.

Writing a “Hello, World!” program

Now that we have Go installed on our computer, we can start coding. We’ll begin by creating a simple “Hello, World!” program.

  1. Open your preferred text editor (e.g. Visual Studio Code, Sublime Text, Notepad++, etc.).
  2. Create a new file and save it with the name hello.go. The .go extension is used for Go files.
  3. Type the following code into your hello.go file:
package main
import "fmt"func main() {
fmt.Println("Hello, World!")
}
  1. Save the file and open your terminal.
  2. Navigate to the directory where you saved your hello.go file.
  3. Type go run hello.go and press Enter. You should see the message "Hello, World!" displayed in the terminal.

Congratulations, you have successfully installed Go on your computer and written your first Go program!

Conclusion

Go is a powerful and efficient programming language that is gaining popularity among developers. In this blog post, we have walked through the steps to install Go on your computer and create a simple “Hello, World!” program. Now that you have the basics down, you can start exploring the language and building your own applications. Happy coding!

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