Go Language for Java Developers Part 1

Go language is normally known as golang. It’s general purpose programming language developed at Google in 2007 by three Google employees namely Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, and Ken Thompson. In November 2008 Google had announced Go Language to public and made it [open source].

Go language compiler is available for the Linux, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Plan 9, and Microsoft Windows operating systems and the i386, amd64, ARM and IBM POWER processor architectures.

Beginner Go language developer should visit following links.

As you are reading this article, It means I can assume that you know about Go Language and it’s advantage and shortcoming. As the title suggest it’s for Java developers, so I can also assume that you have knowledge of core Java.

Install Go Language

• Download installer binary / package / installer as per your OS
• https://golang.org/dl/
• Current version is go 1.4.2
• Run package to install Go language
• After setup completes, you need to set environment variable to go language
• In case of OX, Add /usr/local/go/bin to the PATH environment variable. You can do this by adding this line to your /etc/profile (for a system-wide installation) or $HOME/.bash_profile:
• export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/go/bin
• To verify installation, you can execute following command
• $go version go version go1.4.2 darwin/amd64

Go Language IDE

Officially, Go Language don’t have any IDE but there are many open source 3rd party IDEs / Plugins are available. If you are familiar with IntelliJ or Eclipse then you can install plug-in for Go Language. For more details, please visit following link http://geekmonkey.org/articles/20-comparison-of-ides-for-google-go

Now, you have enough details to jump start coding. In next article I will cover fundamentals and syntax of Go Language.