Go, or Golang, is a language that was developed by Google for in-house software development, to make their software easier to write, maintain and build.

Go has quickly become very popular in the world of development, often used for writing APIs and DevOps tools. Go sits in the middle between low-level languages and high-level languages, often offering the advantages of both.

Go:

• Uses a similar syntax to many other languages, including ‘C’.
• Produces code that runs fast and uses very little memory.
• Run across many platforms.
• Provides simple syntax for multi-threaded programs.
• Provides some object-oriented features.
• Has garbage collection.

Before we can make full use of Go, we first have to learn how to read and run a Go program. Once you’ve finished the entire lesson, read our guide for developing Go locally to compile and run Go programs on your own computer!