You Found Love in a Gopher Face. Now What?

We hear Go is very easy and quick to learn. However, for some impatient newcomers like me, learning Go can seem like a daunting endeavor. When getting started, you might have gotten stuck and the language might even have seen as meant only for advanced developers.

Since falling in love with Go at Gophercon 2015, I have been making progress in my understanding of the language inch by inch, side-project by side-project. As someone deeply involved with GoBridge, I have also seen where others find difficulty with the language. It is still a work in progress for me to be sure, but by now I have uncovered some strategies to draw a more straightforward path to learning Go that could be of benefit to you.

In this talk, I am going to show you these strategies and point you to some great resources to get you on your way to pursuing mastery in Go!

Transcript

1. Name of Presentation You Found Love in a Gopher Face. Carlisia Campos Now What? Engineer @carlisia
2. You Found Love in a Gopher Face. Not What? @carlisia How do we get past the initial phase of learning Go.
3. You Found Love in a Gopher Face. Not What? @carlisia Experience GoBridge co-founding member http://www.golangbridge.org @golangbridge
4. You Found Love in a Gopher Face. Not What? @carlisia You might have heard… Go is easy!
5. You Found Love in a Gopher Face. Not What? @carlisia And then you find… Go is “easy”!
6. You Found Love in a Gopher Face. Not What? @carlisia • We get stuck, “mastery” is not instantaneous • People we hang out with/look up to have deep domain knowledge • We don’t know what to do next, no “popular” path for newcomers The reality for some is…
7. You Found Love in a Gopher Face. Not What? @carlisia And we are… Motivated!
8. You Found Love in a Gopher Face. Not What? @carlisia • People go to meetups and don’t come back • Confusion between language and domain knowledge • Hard to identify high payoff investment of time The end result
9. You Found Love in a Gopher Face. Not What? @carlisia What to do…
10. You Found Love in a Gopher Face. Not What? @carlisia • Interfaces • Concurrency • Object Oriented Ignore stuff
11. You Found Love in a Gopher Face. Not What? @carlisia Is it still Go?
12. You Found Love in a Gopher Face. Not What? @carlisia • Soup up your development environment • Learn the vocabulary, stdlib • Take classes, go to meetups • Well-defined, small projects Focus instead
13. You Found Love in a Gopher Face. Not What? @carlisia • Atom: go-plus • Sublime: Margo and GoSublime • Vim: vim-go • Vs Code: vscode-go • Huge list: https://github.com/golang/go/wiki/IDEsAndTextEditorPlugins • Another tool: Go Guru (http://golang.org/s/using-guru) Resources - editor plugins
14. You Found Love in a Gopher Face. Not What? @carlisia • Podcast: Go Time FM (http://gotime.fm) • Podcast: for specific domains (API, cloud, network, etc) • Youtube videos on specific subjects • Read #golang-newbies and #general channels on Gophers Slack Resources - learn the vocabulary
15. You Found Love in a Gopher Face. Not What? @carlisia • Organize a Women Who Go study group • Organize or attend a GoBridge workshop • Read Effective Go (free online: https://golang.org/doc/effective_go.html) • Go Remote Meetup (http://remotemeetup.golangbridge.org) • Meetup.com (https://go.meetup.com) Resources - classes and meetups
16. You Found Love in a Gopher Face. Not What? @carlisia • Exercism - http://exercism.io • Gopher Challenge - http://golang-challenge.org • Gopher Gala - http://gophergala.com • Help someone you like/admire Resources - small projects
17. You Found Love in a Gopher Face. Not What? @carlisia • Master the basics • While learning, ignore the complex stuff • Focus on syntax and vocabulary • Focus on well-defined, small projects • More important: #sticktoit Conclusions
18. You Found Love in a Gopher Face. Not What? @carlisia Thank You!