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Discussion on: What are the Best Go(lang) Frameworks, IDEs & Tools

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Chris James • Edited

Try to avoid using frameworks with Go unless you really know you need them.

Most people are very productive just using the standard library and including a few libraries for specific things.

And I say just use the standard library but don't take it flippantly. Go has one of the best standard libraries I've ever used. If you really want to be a strong Go developer invest your time in learning it as best you can. Explore net/http, io and strings in particular. Go has a backward compatibility guarantee so anything you learn in the standard library is permanent, unlike any framework you might commit to.

For the IDE, I would try and stick to what you're used to, Go has good support for most environments.

Personally I am an intellij person so Goland is very good for me as I already know all the shortcuts. But people are very happy with Vim Go and VSCode with Go too.

Whatever you pick you should be able to quickly (i.e, with a key combination)

  • Run tests
  • Reformat the code automatically
  • Refactor code into functions
  • Rename things
  • Navigate to symbols
  • Auto fix imports (Go does not allow unused imports which beginners get annoyed at, but all you really need is a good editor to automatically fix it for you)

And I of course have to plug my book Learn Go with tests which will take you through most of what you need to know and show you how to make a web application all with the standard library. Whoo!