Go is a pass-by-value language. In other words, we’re passing functions the value of an argument. In a technical sense, when we’re calling a function with an argument, the Go compiler is strictly using the value of the argument rather than the argument itself. Because of this feature (pass-by-value), the changes that take place in our function, stay within that function.

Picture a teacher with a classroom of students and the teacher needs the students to complete a worksheet. The teacher will have the original copy of the worksheet and make copies for his/her students to write on, but the students are not directly writing on the teacher’s copy.

But, we do have the ability to change values from different scopes. To do so, we need to make use of:

• addresses
• pointers
• dereferencing

Now that we know what topics we need to reference, let’s quickly address this situation and get to the point!