Introduction to Go

last modified July 22, 2026

This is an introduction to the Go programming language, often referred to as Golang. Go first appeared in 2009 and was created at Google by Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, and Ken Thompson.

Go

Go is a statically typed, compiled programming language designed for building scalable, reliable software. It has carved out a strong niche in cloud services, CLI tools, networking, and API servers.

A standout feature of Go is its compilation to a single static binary, which makes deployment trivial. Go also has fast compilation, built-in concurrency primitives (goroutines and channels), memory safety, and garbage collection.

Go installation

The recommended way to install Go on Linux is through the system package manager. For instance, on Debian/Ubuntu we can use apt:

$ sudo apt install golang-go

On Fedora:

$ sudo dnf install golang

Package managers handle updates automatically and integrate Go into the system. However, they may provide an earlier version than the latest release.

The traditional method is to download the binary tarball from go.dev/dl/. This always provides the newest version.

$ wget https://go.dev/dl/go1.26.2.linux-amd64.tar.gz

We extract the archive to /usr/local:

$ sudo rm -rf /usr/local/go && sudo tar -C /usr/local -xzf go1.26.2.linux-amd64.tar.gz

Then we add /usr/local/go/bin to the PATH in ~/.profile or ~/.bashrc:

$ export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/go/bin

> winget install GoLang.Go

On Windows, we can use the winget package manager.

Alternatively, we can download the MSI installer directly from go.dev/dl/ and run it. The installer automatically sets up the required environment paths.

Editor setup

A common choice for Go development is VS Code with the Go extension, which provides code completion, syntax highlighting, debugging, and refactoring tools. After installing VS Code, press Ctrl+P and run:

ext install golang.Go

Alternatively, GoLand is a dedicated IDE with built-in Go support.

The Go tool

The go tool provides the standard way to fetch, build, and install Go packages and commands.

$ go version
go version go1.26.2 linux/amd64

With the version option, we get the version of Go.

> go version
go version go1.26.2 windows/amd64

This is the output on Windows.

command	description
`go build`	compiles packages and dependencies
`go env`	prints Go environment information
`go fmt`	formats Go source code
`go get`	adds dependencies to current module
`go install`	compiles and installs packages and dependencies
`go list`	lists packages and modules
`go mod tidy`	removes unused dependencies and adds missing ones
`go run`	compiles and runs a Go program
`go version`	prints Go version
`go vet`	reports suspicious constructs in Go code

This is a partial list of Go tool commands.

Go first example

We create our first example.

$ mkdir simple
$ cd simple

We create a project directory and relocate there.

$ go mod init zetcode.com/simple

We initiate a Go module.

main.go

package main 

import "fmt"

func main() {
    
    fmt.Println("Go simple example")
}

This is a simple Go program, which prints a message to the console.

$ go run main.go 
Go simple example

We can compile and execute the program in one go with go run command.

$ go build
$ ls
go.mod  main  main.go
$ ./main 
Go simple example

We can create an executable program with go build.

$ go install
$ ls ~/go/bin/
main

With the go install command, we install the binary to the special GOPATH directory, which defaults to $HOME/go on Unix.

In the next example, we show variables, basic types, and a for loop.

main.go

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "math"
)

func main() {

    primes := []int{2, 3, 5, 7, 11}

    for _, val := range primes {

        sq := val * val
        fmt.Printf("%d squared is %d\n", val, sq)
    }

    radius := 7.5
    area := math.Pi * radius * radius
    fmt.Printf("Area of circle with radius %.1f is %.2f\n", radius, area)
}

The example demonstrates a slice, a for loop with range, a local variable, and a floating-point calculation using the math package.

Source

The Go Programming Language Specification

In this article we have introduced the Go language.

Author

My name is Jan Bodnar, and I am a passionate programmer with extensive programming experience. I have been writing programming articles since 2007. To date, I have authored over 1,400 articles and 8 e-books. I possess more than ten years of experience in teaching programming.

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