Editors

We're about to write our first program in our new hello directory. You will first need to choose which editor to use. Fortunately, working with Go does not require any special IDE or editor. The Go toolchain integrates easily into many editors and IDEs. Your options range from using a simple text editor, such as Notepad, to full-fledged IDEs dedicated to Go.

I recommend that you start with a simple text editor, such as nano or gedit, since these are included with Ubuntu, easy to use, and support syntax highlighting for Go out of the box. Feel free to choose another editor or IDE though.

Plugins exist for many text editors and IDEs to add Go support. For example, Visual Studio Code, Emacs, Sublime Text, JetBrains IntelliJ, Vim, Atom, NetBeans, and Eclipse all have Go plugins. There are a couple of Go-specific IDEs, namely JetBrains GoLand and LiteIDE, both of which are cross-platform.

Start with the nano or gedit command and explore other editors and IDEs after you are comfortable with Go. This book will not compare the editors or cover how to configure them.