How to Install Go and Start Building Simple, Fast, and Reliable Software
How to Download and Install Go Programming Language
Are you interested in learning a new programming language that is simple, fast, and powerful? If so, you might want to give Go a try. In this article, you will learn what Go is, why you should use it, and how to download and install it on your computer.
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What is Go?
Go is an open-source programming language that was created by Google in 2009. It is designed to make programmers more productive by providing features such as:
Support for concurrency: Go can run multiple tasks at the same time using goroutines and channels.
Fast compilation: Go can compile large programs in seconds.
Powerful standard library: Go has a rich set of packages that cover common tasks such as web development, networking, testing, and more.
Simple syntax: Go has a clear and concise syntax that is easy to read and write.
Go is also known as Golang because of its domain name .
Why Go?
Go has many advantages over other programming languages. Some of them are:
also has a built-in code formatter and a code analysis tool that help maintain a consistent coding style and quality across teams.
Go is fast and scalable: Go can run efficiently on different platforms, from low-end devices to high-performance servers. It also has a garbage collector that manages memory allocation and deallocation automatically. Go can handle high concurrency and parallelism, which makes it ideal for building scalable applications that can handle millions of users and requests.
Go is fun and expressive: Go has a simple and elegant syntax that allows programmers to write clear and concise code. It also supports some functional programming features such as closures, higher-order functions, and error handling. Go has a rich set of operators and built-in types that make coding more enjoyable and expressive.
Go is used by many companies and organizations for various purposes, such as web development, cloud computing, data science, machine learning, and more. Some examples of popular projects that use Go are .
How to Download Go
To start using Go, you need to download the Go binary distribution for your operating system. You can download Go from the official or use the following links for the latest stable version (1.17.3 as of writing this article):
Operating System
Download Link
Linux
Mac
Windows
Download Go for Linux
If you are using Linux, you can download the Go tarball from the link above and extract it to any location you want. For example, you can extract it to /usr/local/go using the following command:
sudo tar -C /usr/local -xzf go1.17.3.linux-amd64.tar.gz
You can also use a different location, such as your home directory, if you prefer.
Download Go for Mac
If you are using Mac, you can download the Go installer from the link above and run it to install Go to /usr/local/go by default. You can also change the installation location if you want.
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Download Go for Windows
If you are using Windows, you can download the Go installer from the link above and run it to install Go to C:\Go by default. You can also change the installation location if you want.
How to Install Go
After downloading Go, you need to install it and set up some environment variables to use it properly.
Install Go on Linux
If you extracted Go to /usr/local/go, you need to add /usr/local/go/bin to your PATH environment variable so that you can run the go command from any directory. You can do this by adding the following line to your /.profile or /.bashrc file:
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/go/bin
You may also need to create a directory for your Go workspace, where you will store your Go code and packages. By default, this directory is /go, but you can use any location you want. You just need to set the GOPATH environment variable to point to your workspace directory. You can do this by adding the following line to your /.profile or /.bashrc file:
export GOPATH=$HOME/go
You may also want to add $GOPATH/bin to your PATH environment variable so that you can run any executable files that you install from external packages. You can do this by adding the following line to your /.profile or /.bashrc file:
export PATH=$PATH:$GOPATH/bin
to take effect.
Install Go on Mac
If you installed Go using the installer, you don't need to do anything else to set up the environment variables, as they are already configured for you. However, if you want to change the default values, you can edit your /.bash_profile or /.zshrc file and add or modify the following lines:
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/go/bin
export GOPATH=$HOME/go
export PATH=$PATH:$GOPATH/bin
You may also need to create a directory for your Go workspace, where you will store your Go code and packages. By default, this directory is /go, but you can use any location you want.
Install Go on Windows
If you installed Go using the installer, you don't need to do anything else to set up the environment variables, as they are already configured for you. However, if you want to change the default values, you can edit your system or user environment variables and add or modify the following entries:
Name
Value
Path
C:\Go\bin;C:\Users\YourName\go\bin
GOPATH
C:\Users\YourName\go
You may also need to create a directory for your Go workspace, where you will store your Go code and packages. By default, this directory is C:\Users\YourName\go, but you can use any location you want.
How to Verify Go Installation
To verify that Go is installed correctly and running, you can use the go version command to check the version of Go that you have. You should see something like this:
go version go1.17.3 linux/amd64
The output may vary depending on your operating system and architecture.
You can also use the go env command to check the values of the environment variables that Go uses. You should see something like this:
GO111MODULE="" GOARCH="amd64" GOBIN="" GOCACHE="/home/yourname/.cache/go-build" GOENV="/home/yourname/.config/go/env" GOEXE="" GOEXPERIMENT="" GOFLAGS="" GOHOSTARCH="amd64" GOHOSTOS="linux" GOINSECURE="" GOMODCACHE="/home/yourname/go/pkg/mod" GONOPROXY="" GONOSUMDB="" GOOS="linux" GOPATH="/home/yourname/go" GOPRIVATE="" GOPROXY=" GOROOT="/usr/local/go" GOSUMDB="sum.golang.org" GOTMPDIR="" GOTOOLDIR="/usr/local/go/pkg/tool/linux_amd64" GOVCS="" GOVERSION="go1.17.3" GCCGO="gccgo" AR="ar" CC="gcc" CXX="g++" CGO_ENABLED="1" GOMOD="/dev/null" CGO_CFLAGS="-g -O2" CGO_CPPFLAGS="" CGO_CXXFLAGS="-g -O2" CGO_FFLAGS="-g -O2" CGO_LDFLAGS="-g -O2" PKG_CONFIG="pkg-config" GOGCCFLAGS="-fPIC -m64 -pthread -fmessage-length=0 -fdebug-prefix-map=/tmp/go-build123456789=/tmp/go-build -gno-record-gcc-switches"
The output may vary depending on your operating system and configuration.
How to Get Started with Go
Now that you have downloaded and installed Go, you are ready to start writing some Go code. In this section, you will learn some basic Go concepts and tools that will help you get started.
Write Your First Go Program
A Go program is a file that has a .go extension and contains one or more packages. A package is a collection of related code that provides some functionality. The main package is a special package that defines the entry point of a Go program.
To write your first Go program, create a file named hello.go in your workspace directory and write the following code:
package main import "fmt" func main() fmt.Println("Hello, world!")
the entry point of the program, where it prints "Hello, world!" to the standard output using the fmt.Println function.
To run this program, you can use the go run command, which compiles and executes the code in one step. In your terminal, navigate to the directory where you saved hello.go and type:
go run hello.go</cod