Effective Go

Top Reference Material

Here’s the reference material I use to help guide me on basic style, design, and general idiomatic Go practices.

Resource	Description
Go Style Guide	A guide to writing Go code.
Uber Go Styleguide	A thorough stylistic guide (opinionated, but great explanations on why)
Practical Go - Dave Cheney	A great practical guide from a well-respected authority in the Go community

Effective Go

Principles I’ve gleaned over time and am quoting or bookmarking.

Don’t hide the cost

Source: Bill Kennedy in Ultimate Go [^readability]

If we are doing construction on a variable, we use value construction. Avoid pointer semantic construction if it’s not being returned.

Example:

// Clearly visible cost of the allocation by value construction and passing of pointer back up the call stack
func createSomething() *something {
  u := something{
    name: "example",
  }
  return &u // <-- This makes clear the cost and allocation back up the callstack.
}
// The cost is obscured by construction being a pointer
// and returning a value that is not clear to the reader if it's a value or pointer
func createSomething() *something {
  u := &something{
    name: "example",
  }
  return u // <-- Not good. Hides the cost, and requires reading the function further to find out that this is a pointer.
}

Making the cost obvious and visible is a high priority for creating readable, maintainable code in a team context.