Let's Go

by Alex Edwards

Go is a great language for building web applications. But teaching yourself from blog posts and the standard-library documentation can often leave you with more questions than answers.

You might be wondering:

* Where can I see a concrete example of a real-world web application?
* How is it best to structure and organize my code?
* How do I make sure I’m not making any mistakes when it comes to security?
* How do I use modules to manage and version control dependencies?
* And how do I effectively test my web application?

Let’s Go answers these questions for you — and a whole lot more.

The book guides you through the start-to-finish build of a real-world application, so you'll gain all the knowledge, understanding and confidence needed to create production-quality applications with Go.

Genres: Programming, Go, Technology, Computer Science, Technical, Nonfiction, Computers

305 pages, ebook

Reviews

[Mike Janger]

This book is great for those who've come from other languages and asked "Which Go web framework should I learn" only to be answered with "Just use the standard library." If you want to understand what those folks are saying, this book answers why. It walks you through creating an example web app, introducing concepts a chapter at a time in concise, clear language. The book covers routing and REST, working with a database, templating, middleware, forms, sessions, authentication and authorization, and testing. Best practices and explanations of standard library concepts are covered in each chapter. Even if you eventually decide to go with a batteries-included framework for your next web application, I think it's worth reading this book to gain a good understanding of what's going on under the hood.

[Mauri · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book. It was perfect for my situation, I already knew the syntax and simple patterns but didn't really have any experience developing webapps and had to learn everything on the fly when asked to add functionalities to an already existing web.

It perfectly guided my way to improve the existing app, use better patterns and add every functionality I was asked to add.

It is highly opinionated, for example, in one part it suggests a package created by the author and doesn't really explain why it's better than the other options, but I don't really care about that.

If my situation resonates with you, you want to learn how to design a web app in Go without having to go through a tedious introduction to its syntax and basic functions, this book is excellent.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exactly what I was after.  I've always had a "create my own app" desire, but never had a good project.  After finally getting a project for which my enthusiasm would last beyond a weekend, I didn't know where to start.  After some soul searching, I identified Go as the desired server language but from there didn't know the best way to structure the service endpoints, to write the client code, or which database to choose, among other things.  I knew I wanted to avoid traveling down the turn-key framework route, but also didn't want to just dump a bunch of code starting from the standard httpserver in Go without any sort of best practices.  This book was a treasured find: the fundamentals I was after in an easy to follow and modify setting.  I'll know in time whether or not this leads to a successful side project, but even if that loses steam, the knowledge I gained from this book, as someone with no web development experience, will make me better at software in general, especially as I need to navigate web services.

[Mochammad Hadyan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book, suitable for someone who want to learn Golang by practices, specifically learn building website from scratch.

Definitely the content super basic and the author give slow pace to understand step-by-step on building website.

However, if you never use Golang before. I don't suggest to read this directly because there is no Golang 101 to cover.

I suggest you can start with "The Little Go Book": https://github.com/karlseguin/the-lit... which contain great materials about fundamental concepts of Go.

The contents are easy to absorb, but you might need to spend some time to follow the practical materials since this language is very special which some concepts might be totally new, even for seasoned programmers.

[Max · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read quite a few books that share the structure of this one: building a simple web app in a specific language with specific libraries. If you know how to build a web server, they can start to blend together.

The reason I keep reading books like this is for the little nuggets or info about the specific environment and to be exposed to some new patterns.

While I've written a good few Go web apps, it's nice to see some of the ideas around organization and testing strategies.

This is just a well written book with some good technical advice and I'd recommend it to anyone writing HTTP servers in Go.

[Marcus Smoke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably the best coding book I've ever read. For several years I've been trying to improve my programming skills more. As I work in tech already as a devops engineer, but focus mainly on the infrastructure side, I was keen to take up Golang as a language and develop my proficiency to improve my work.

Alex Edwards takes you through the entire process of building an application, but not in a way that is confusing or muddled - like many other coding tutorial books. He also goes to great lengths to stick with the Go standard library for roughly 99% of the codebase. It's made me fall in love with the language but also really inspired me to keep on working on my Go skills moving forward.

Excited to read his next book in the series "Let's Go Further".

[Jeremy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my favorite golang book I've read so far. It's a great introduction to the standard library for building webserving apps and writing clean, idiomatic go code.

Coming from any other language, the first instinct is to find the most popular webserver framework and use that - this is refreshing how core to golang it is but it took reading this book to understands just _how_ robust the standard library is for networking.

Very well organized and thoughtful annotations in the code snippets. Highly recommend

[Bojack Horseman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alex Edwards did a pretty nice job on this one. I didn't knew any Go, but did knew a variety of languages and work as a software engineer so I did went through well through the book, there are very useful links to use that explain more about the Go language and decisions about certain things. The book does a really nice job of creating an application with minimal packages and good patterns to use. It is a really good hands on approach to start learning the language and coming from someone that seems to really know what he is talking.

[Aleksandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great book for people who's either written web apps in other languages before and wants to learn how to do it in Go or who knows Go but has never written web apps. In any case this books gives a step-by-step detailed guide on everything you need to know to get started. It does not provide a syntax guide so it helps using other tools or materials to learn it prior to reading this book.

I really liked how the author would give an example and each time a "but why is it..." question popped up in my mind, it got answered immediately in the next paragraph.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perfect for someone who already knows a programming language and wants to learn Go. This book will guide you through the process of building a web application with Go, step-by-step, without using any frameworks. The book is also rich in resources and references, so that you can read more about what interests you, or what you don't understand well. I was a bit disappointed because Alex didn't cover RestAPI in this book (which he did in his second book "Let's Go further").

[Mr. Musale · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a nice book for someone who has been programming in other languages and needs to build a project in Go. I found it easy to follow and there were a lot of insights into the steps that the author followed in solving the problems. I recommend this book for anyone interested in the Go programming language.

[Alain O'Dea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Solid explanatory tutorial of building a web application in the Go Programming Language. It explains things carefully and incrementally. It ends well with a clear opportunity to apply your learning as a reader with limited guidance. I walked away from this with significantly more confidence in my ability to use Go effectively.

[Ramiro Garza · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book, it perfectly guided my way to improve my existing foundations, use better patterns and add every functionality I was asked to add. Also found value in The Little Book of Go which was linked.

Alex was also kind enough to give me a student discount, all-around great experience with this.

[Daniele Cambi · Rating 4 out of 5]

TL:DR. A nice, easy one for experienced programmers that want to learn Go

It teaches the fundamentals of go web frameworks by leveraging the standard library for the most part, its structured as a long technical that walks you through building a fullstack web application.

[Benjamin Schneider · Rating 4 out of 5]

See my review of the successor book Let's Go Further! here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Tommaso Cortonesi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice hands-on book for go. I appreciate the concrete suggestions of the author. Good read for web developers intrested in go.

[AndreiG · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book! Kudos to the author for getting across so many concepts in such a clean way.

[Adrian Ivanov · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the best tutorial for Go I've seen so far. Content is well structured and nothing is left unexplained.

[Omar ElKhatib · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very easy to read and follow

[John Mantios · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exceptional

[Dissoin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good book to start learning web development using Go. Full of practical code examples.

[Bagus Santoso · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great for learning the basic of web development with Go

[Maximiliano Curia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think the exercises could have been added through out the book. But I really enjoyed following the book.

[ZRC · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent introduction to both Go and web-back end programming. And even if you're not going to be working with web back-end, it's a good intro to a powerful general purpose language. I wasn't familiar with golang and this was tremendously helpful. I'll likely read the follow-up book as well. If you're looking to jump into golang, look no further. This is a good start.