The Go Programming Language

Before diving into the more complex examples of using Go for security, it is important to have a solid foundation. This chapter provides an overview of the Go programming language so that you have the knowledge necessary to follow the subsequent examples.

This chapter is not an exhaustive treatise of the Go programming language, but will give you a solid overview of the major features. The goal of this chapter is to provide you with the information you need to understand and follow the source code if you have never used Go before. If you are already familiar with Go, this chapter should be a quick and easy review of things you already know, but perhaps you will learn a new piece of information.

This chapter specifically covers the following topics:

• The Go language specification
• The Go playground
• A tour of Go
• Keywords
• Notes about source code
• Comments
• Types
• Control structures
• Defer
• Packages
• Classes
• Goroutines
• Getting help and documentation