Onboarding #
First things first #
It’s called Go #
Regardless of what you have heard or seen online, the language is called Go and pronounced the same way. People use the term Golang for search engine optimisation (SEO) reasons - we all have to agree that googling for the word Go won’t bring many meaningful results. However, you may be frowned up if you use the word Golang in a spoken sentence. I know, it is not welcoming to beginners, but I am not making the rules.
Don’t be afraid to ask stupid questions #
This advice applies to anything you do in life, but perhaps even more so when learning Go. Because Go is often marketed as no-brainer easy, over the years, I have noticed a sense of rudeness towards members coming from other communities or picking up programming through Go. The usual answers go something like “we don’t do that here,” or “there is one way to do things in Go,” or “read the 🤬 manual!” This can be really stifling to beginners. In the long run, it stifles existing Go programmers even more. By shutting down discussion as pointless early on, all we do is limit ourselves to our tiny filter bubble. Perhaps out of fear, perhaps out of self-doubt, who knows.
By all means, I encourage you to ask stupid questions. And if you get one of the answers above, ask them again. In the end, the only stupid question is the one you did not ask. And I am sure there are many people out there ready to answer. I am one of them.
Get to know the community #
NOTE: This is a very small list of people, which I will try to update over time. In case you are coming from the Java community, there is a similar list of Java developers I have recently found. I think it is worth linking it here.
There is another list of Go developers who have migrated to Mastodon. I have just found out about it via Reddit.
Gophers on the Internet #
Twitter #
- The Go Programming Language community on Twitter.
Reddit #
The official Go subreddit