My Top 5 Resources for Learning Golang: Beginner to Advanced

Is Golang Worth Learning?

I can’t quite convey how excited I am to use Golang this year. I’ve sought to squeeze it in any chance I get.

I see it as Python, but strongly typed and much faster. This is because it’s not only a fairly easy syntax to pick up but it was intended to be a simple language without all the unnecessary fluff.

With its swiss army knife standard library and its fast concurrency, it’s a language that can be used confidently on many types of projects from automation scripting, web applications, systems programming, CLI apps, and more.

Is Golang worth learning?

Absolutely!

Money Saving Tips on Learning

Before we get into the top 5 resources for learning Golang, I want to just give a few tips on saving money while learning.

A. Never Pay Full Price for a Udemy Course

Just what it says, NEVER pay full price for a Udemy course.

In fact, NEVER pay over $15 for a Udemy course. There are always coupons and deals out there. So much so that I have written an entire post with three failproof methods on where you can always find Udemy coupons.

B. Use Honey to Earn Money on Udemy Courses

Second, download the Honey Chrome extension.

It not only searches for Coupons on like every site out there, but it pays you rewards for buying things, and specifically it gives you money for buying Udemy courses.

I honestly just recently cashed out $30 from just Udemy courses (and maybe some other purchases here and there).

And if you sign up with my link, they’ll give you $5… just for signing up.

Win/Win: You get coupon codes, $5, and paid for each Udemy course you buy in the future.

My Top 5 Resources for Learning Golang

1. Go: The Complete Developer's' Guide by Stephen Grider

If you are brand new to Golang, this is the #1 course I would recommend to you.

It’s what I started with.

Aside from Stephen being an excellent teacher, this course leaves out all the advanced and confusing concepts of Golang, and teaches you the basics. From Hello World to Go Routines.

Now in case you feel like you want more than the basics or perhaps you’ll be limited by not learning more than the basics, trust me on this. You WILL be able to build anything you wish after this course.

And it’s only 9 hours!

Definitely my #1 recommendation for a solid intro to Golang.

**Another beginner option is A Tour of Go, but it’s super boring. I mean, we want to build stuff, right?

2. Go By Example

Why “Go By Example”? Let me explain:

Go to Go By Example and take a look.

After taking the Udemy course, what here do you recognize? Slices, loops, conditionals, go routines, functions, structs, etc. Great!

Next, look at all you do NOT know. Now you get where I’m going…

“Go By Example” gives you examples of Go code. And there are MANY examples here you have probably never used in Go like reading files, command line flags, Go Context, and even concepts you probably have never heard of like Mutexes, Spawning, and Signals.

That’s why this page is great…

Just open it and learn, by example, a few new things each day. This will move you into an Intermediate Go Developer skill group.

3. The Go Programming Language (Mastery!)

This is the community-acknowledged Go Bible and will take you from beginner to an advanced, deep understanding of Golang.

It can essentially be the one and only resource you use to get really good at Golang (you’d just need to catch up on a few more modern aspects as the book is somewhat old. )

And while you can find it free online, this is a book you WILL want the physical copy of to place on your desk.

So take a look at the free PDF, and if it looks as tasty to you as it does to me, go buy the real thing.

4. Gophercises

Gophercises is a FREE course by John Calhoun of calhoun.io.

In this course, you will build over 20 different mini-applications, packages, and tools of all skill levels. This means you can get lots of hands-on practice with building simple to intermediate apps, while also moving on to more advanced apps tackling concepts such as Mutexes, Chaining interfaces, other libraries you may not have used like io and time, and more GoRoutines.

I’ve done a few of the applications and they are truly high quality and informative. A few example projects are:

1. Quiz game
2. URL Shortener
3. CLI Task Manager
4. Blackjack
5. Secrets API and CLI
6. And many more.

So go check it out:

5. Building Web Applications with Go - Intermediate Level by Trevor Sawler

Finally, you should get into building web applications in Golang. While Golang started out as and is seen by many as a systems language, it has gained strong momentum in the Web Applications space.

In this course, you’ll build a secure e-commerce application with Go. You’ll tackle concepts like user auth, recurring payments, back-end APIs in Go, and microservices in general.

This course is on my “next to take” Udemy list and should make it’s way on your as well.

** Do note that this assumes a pretty good understanding of Go before taking it. If you have no clue about Golang Web Apps then consider either his other more introductory course or this course by Todd McLeod.

Conclusion

So there are my top 5 resources for learning Golang, whether beginner or advanced. As its popularity grows, I definitely think it’s a wise move to become acquainted well with this technology.

Are you learning Golang?

What are your top recommended goto resources? Share below!