Learning Go! (Dev Diary #2)

Austin Higgins — Sat, 08 Oct 2022 21:57:46 +0000

This article is going to summarize week two of learning go. This week was fantastic, and I learned a lot more, but I already found an issue with my previous learning approach.

Shooting from the hip only works for so long.

You need to understand how to aim to improve in a specific area. I went into go blindly, which led to a lot of discovery in an unstructured way. I wouldn't go back and do it any different because it forced me out of my comfort zone and back into coding.

Projects this week:

A basic discord bot that I could add to my personal server. You can send it direct messages, and it will automatically respond back. The tutorial was created by Akhil Sharma he has lots of other go tutorials too.
I started a course on microservices, by Nic Jackson which is free on YouTube. Most of his stuff seems to be from 2 years ago, so there may be some slight differences with the imports, but I enjoyed it so far.
I started going through "A Tour of Go", which was helpful and exposied some of the weak spots in my previous approach. I think this is a great place to start for most people.

Key Takeaways:

I am happy with my learning outcome so far. I am still a noob by all accounts, but as I dig deeper into the go community it seems to be very friendly and welcoming.

A little personal challenge that I started that is open to anyone who wants to become a better developer is #paintgithubgreen which is a #100daysofcode alternative focusing on making at least one commit on GitHub per day during the week, and no participation requirements over the weekend and holidays.

Only two weeks down so far, but I am excited to build a healthy new habit. Please leave any recommendations for reading, projects, or anything else in the comments.

Thank you to all for supporting me on this journey!

Social Media:
LinkedIn: Austin-Higgins
GitHub: Austin-Higgins
Twitter: @AustHiggins

Learning Go! (Dev Diary #1)

Austin Higgins — Mon, 03 Oct 2022 16:06:04 +0000

This article is the start of a series where I track my progress with go and share my code with others. All of the tutorials, and external resources I use will be linked at the bottom of the post.

Quick Things about me!

I have programmed in the past, in college.
I have never worked as a software developer.
I know a little (C++, Python, HTML, CSS, JS)

LinkedIn: Austin-Higgins
GitHub: Austin-Higgins
Twitter: @AustHiggins

Why Go?
The Syntax makes sense to my brain, it is lightning fast, and it is a compiled programming language. Being able to compile my code for multiple operating systems is important to me.

End Goals

Understanding go through doing.
Lots of small projects to add to portfolio.
At least one cool project to maintain after.
Strong focus on APIs and backend stuff.

Project 1 - Web Server
The first project comes from FreeCodeCamp's YouTube channel -> Here. If you follow along this tutorial, you will come out of it with a functional web server.

But... what does all this mean?
Do I need to remember all this?

No, you don't need to remember it all, but follow these rules to get the most out of it.

Type everything. (No copy and pasting)
Do not take credit for other people's work.
Do a little bit each day, build a habit.
Once it is working pick it apart, look through the code and figure out what it does.

We all learn differently
I learned a lot from this first exercise, and if you didn't that's okay... this method probably isn't for you. The main point of this dev log is to document my process, but if it helps even one person, I'll be super happy.

This is what I learned from Project 1:

The basic structure of a .go file.
Validating our environment works.
Assigning variables, importing packages, variables, functions, structs, and more.
That anyone can take the first steps, even if they need to start with a tutorial and write things one line at a time.

Roadblocks := "Learning Experiences"
So, I followed the guides exactly and everything worked perfectly? Not Quite.

The first web server took a couple hours.
The crud api took a couple different sessions over two days. It was hard, but I didn't rush.
The third project was simple, and it allowed me to take a couple steps back and understand the fundamentals better. Building an api that you can query that just says hello.

Unorthodox Learning
The learning style in college didn't work well for me, I always liked trying things out even if they failed. Working a few jobs has taught me a lot more than my education I paid for.

I realize this article may not resonate well with people who are purists, and insist on sitting down and digesting whitepapers, textbooks, or other documentation.

That doesn't work for me, and this and future articles are focused on others who are wired that way too.

Thanks for your time! :)
Austin

References & Projects:
Project 1: Here (FreeCodeCamp)
Project 2: Here (FreeCodeCamp)
Project 3: Here(@karanpratapsingh)

DEV Community: Austin Higgins

Learning Go! (Dev Diary #2)

Learning Go! (Dev Diary #1)