GoLang First Program - Hello, World

In this tutorial, we will write a simple "Hello, World!" program in GoLang.

package main

import "fmt"

func main() {
    fmt.Println("Hello, World!")
}

Explanation of the Code

• package main: This line defines the package name. Every Go file starts with a package declaration. Packages are Go's way of organizing and reusing code. The main package is special because it tells Go that this file will be the entry point of the program. Only the main package can contain the main function, which is where execution of the program starts.
• import "fmt": This line imports the fmt package, which contains functions for formatted I/O (Input/Output) operations. Here, you're using it to print text to the console.
• func main() { ... }: This defines the main function. As mentioned, the main function is the entry point of your Go program. The braces { } enclose the body of the function.
• fmt.Println("Hello, World!"): Inside the main function, this line calls the Println function from the fmt package. Println stands for "print line", and it outputs the string "Hello, World!" to the console, followed by a newline character.

Run the Program

Save your file with a .go extension, for example, hello.go. Open a terminal or command prompt, navigate to the directory where your file is saved, and run the program by typing go run hello.go. You should see the output Hello, World! printed to the console.

Process

When you run the program using go run, the Go compiler compiles the code into an executable binary, and then immediately runs that binary.