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Head First Go
What will you learn from this book?
Go makes it easy to build software that’s simple, reliable, and efficient. Andthis book makes it easy for programmers like you to get started. Googledesigned Go for high-performance networking and multiprocessing, but—like Python and JavaScript—the language is easy to read and use. With thispractical hands-on guide, you’ll learn how to write Go code using clearexamples that demonstrate the language in action. Best of all, you’ll understandthe conventions and techniques that employers want entry-level Godevelopers to know.
Why does this book look so different?
Based on the latest research in cognitive science and learning theory, HeadFirst Go uses a visually rich format to engage your mind rather than a textheavyapproach that puts you to sleep. Why waste your time struggling withnew concepts? This multisensory learning experience is designed for theway your brain really works.
Go makes it easy to build software that’s simple, reliable, and efficient. Andthis book makes it easy for programmers like you to get started. Googledesigned Go for high-performance networking and multiprocessing, but—like Python and JavaScript—the language is easy to read and use. With thispractical hands-on guide, you’ll learn how to write Go code using clearexamples that demonstrate the language in action. Best of all, you’ll understandthe conventions and techniques that employers want entry-level Godevelopers to know.
Why does this book look so different?
Based on the latest research in cognitive science and learning theory, HeadFirst Go uses a visually rich format to engage your mind rather than a textheavyapproach that puts you to sleep. Why waste your time struggling withnew concepts? This multisensory learning experience is designed for theway your brain really works.
1008 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 4, 2019
98 people are currently reading
141 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
November 22, 2020
Should be subtitled: Go for absolute beginners.
It's a very good book for the right audience. If you're fairly new to programming, it's a good book for you. However, it would be much too slow for someone with a little bit more experience. The official "Tour of Go" would be much better.
It's a very good book for the right audience. If you're fairly new to programming, it's a good book for you. However, it would be much too slow for someone with a little bit more experience. The official "Tour of Go" would be much better.
July 19, 2019
Good, but let down by the last few chapters.
November 23, 2025
I like the Head First series because, although the cartoons, magnet pools and doodles can seem a bit silly at times, the content is usually high quality. It teaches you things in an engaging way by adding riddles, Q&As, magnet pools and fill-in-the-blank exercises. I also like that the example code has an actual purpose, rather than just showing generic code. You build little programs in each chapter that try to solve a real problem (albeit a simulated one), which I also find helpful for understanding everything.
In terms of Go, this book covers everything you need to learn the language, setting you up perfectly to read more advanced resources. If you already know one or two languages, especially statically typed ones, you could probably get through it over the weekend. You're just learning a language, not any fancy libraries or complex algorithms. Compared to something like Learning Go: An Idiomatic Approach to Real-World Go Programming, Head First Go covers basically the same material in half the time and in a much more engaging way.
As further reading, I would recommend The Go Programming Language as well as Learn Go with Pocket-Sized Projects
In terms of Go, this book covers everything you need to learn the language, setting you up perfectly to read more advanced resources. If you already know one or two languages, especially statically typed ones, you could probably get through it over the weekend. You're just learning a language, not any fancy libraries or complex algorithms. Compared to something like Learning Go: An Idiomatic Approach to Real-World Go Programming, Head First Go covers basically the same material in half the time and in a much more engaging way.
As further reading, I would recommend The Go Programming Language as well as Learn Go with Pocket-Sized Projects
July 25, 2020
My main issue with the "Head First" format is while the little puzzles (refrigerator magnets, the pool thingy) is doubtless helpful, the books don't come with the actual magnets or a pool. So you're like as not to not do them. Unless you're going to go through the trouble to print them out the pages and cut the pieces out and then do them, you're not getting as much out of the exercise as you might.
That aside, they tend to be well-edited (language and technology) books that leave you with some genuine skills. This is the sort of beginner's book I read even when I've been working with a language for some time because I assume there are holes in my basic knowledge and beginner's books are the fastest way to find those and fill them in.
There's also a certain ego gratification to burning through a book because you had already figured it out, not gonna lie. But in-between patting myself on the back for figuring out how Go's poorly named "slices" work and how it's wonky as far as pointer/dereferences go, I learned things like how Go handles documentation, and its multithreading and testing features, which I hadn't bothered.
I didn't find the Big Picture stuff I was hoping for, which I notice is a very common thing among non-OO languages. Even if it's arbitrary and ill-suited to a particular problem, OO gives you a definite path to organizing and designing very large products. It's not really a knock against what is essentially a beginner's book, but I'm still looking.
That aside, they tend to be well-edited (language and technology) books that leave you with some genuine skills. This is the sort of beginner's book I read even when I've been working with a language for some time because I assume there are holes in my basic knowledge and beginner's books are the fastest way to find those and fill them in.
There's also a certain ego gratification to burning through a book because you had already figured it out, not gonna lie. But in-between patting myself on the back for figuring out how Go's poorly named "slices" work and how it's wonky as far as pointer/dereferences go, I learned things like how Go handles documentation, and its multithreading and testing features, which I hadn't bothered.
I didn't find the Big Picture stuff I was hoping for, which I notice is a very common thing among non-OO languages. Even if it's arbitrary and ill-suited to a particular problem, OO gives you a definite path to organizing and designing very large products. It's not really a knock against what is essentially a beginner's book, but I'm still looking.
December 1, 2021
I will admit that I just skimmed over the web server part. I barely write web backend stuff in Python, I'm not about to do it in Go any time soon. My main goal with this book was to finally learn Go after having heard about it for 2-3 years now. This book turns out to be a very good resource for that. I have no idea how well it would work for someone who's never programmed before, but for me it's my 4th or 5th programming language and for most languages the basics are all the same (just like most languages have nouns, verbs, articles, etc) and it's all about learning the details. I've been able to use what I've learned here to solve some problems for Advent of Code (a December programming set of puzzles) although I *did* have to go out to the official documentation a little to figure out things not covered in this book (like regular expressions).
If you need a jumpstart on Go, I heartily recommend this book. It's written like a hip textbook with with little silly pictures and stuff, but each chapter has a mini project in it to give you a good understanding of how it fits together. This type of learning is best for me when I'm first learning a language vs the programming language books that are more like a reference book. Your mileage may vary based on your learning style.
If you need a jumpstart on Go, I heartily recommend this book. It's written like a hip textbook with with little silly pictures and stuff, but each chapter has a mini project in it to give you a good understanding of how it fits together. This type of learning is best for me when I'm first learning a language vs the programming language books that are more like a reference book. Your mileage may vary based on your learning style.
September 6, 2024
Solid book. I've been a fan of the Head First format all the way back to Head First Design Patterns. I find the format very valuable for keeping focus and it fits well with the way I like to learn things. This particular book is setup more for someone who may not have a number of languages already in their toolbox, but it worked incredibly well for polishing up my knowledge. I have a tendency to just start writing things in a new language, and I've been working with Go for awhile now, but I was looking for something that would take me through all the basic Go opinions and design decisions in a more directed manner. Because Go is such a very opinionated language I felt like I had a bit of a gap and I wanted to wrap my head around the opinions and tradeoffs. I got that here for sure. It did a good job of highlighting what Go shares with other languages and where it decided to do its own thing.
Great book for beginners, solid book for anyone who wants to firm up their foundational Go knowledge, not for anyone who is looking to leave the junior level of Go development.
Great book for beginners, solid book for anyone who wants to firm up their foundational Go knowledge, not for anyone who is looking to leave the junior level of Go development.
August 26, 2020
I bought that book last week to get ahead with the new (not that new actually) cool kid on the block: Go. The book gave me good insights into the programming language and I am able now to read and write (need more practice though) programs in Go. As any head first book, it is written in simple and understandable language. If you are experienced you can finish the 500 pages book within 2 days as the code examples are self explaining. What I did not like was that certain topics such as Goroutines were not described properly, they were compared with threads when it is another concept of concurrency. But I guess further advanced topics would break the scope of the book. So if you want to get into Go: You gotta read this book. If you want a deeper look into Go and understand how things work under the hood then you might need to look for another book
October 9, 2021
หนังสือ Head First Go เล่มนี้ เป็นหนังสือ Golang ที่ผมคิดว่าอ่านง่าย อ่านสนุกมาก
สำหรับมือใหม่ที่เพิ่งหัดเขียน Golang หนังสือเล่มนี้เหมาะมากที่จะอ่านเป็นเล่มแรก ๆ เพราะมีรูปภาพประกอบการอธิบาย ให้เข้าใจได้ง่าย มีรูปอธิบายโค้ดแต่ละบรรทัด และโค้ดตัวอย่างก็ไม่ยาวจนเกินไป ผมคิดว่ารูปประกอบในหนังสือเล่มนี้ช่วยให้จำ syntax และเข้าใจหัวข้อต่าง ๆ ได้ง่ายขึ้นมาก
ในฐานะคนที่เขียน Golang มานานแล้ว ผมก็ชอบหนังสือเล่มนี้นะครับ ผมชอบวิธีอธิบาย ชอบรูปประกอบ เพราะช่วยให้เราจำสิ่งที่เรารู้อยู่แล้วได้ง่ายขึ้น และยังช่วยให้เราได้เทคนิคใหม่ ๆ เพื่อนำไปใช้อธิบายคนอื่นต่อได้ด้วย
รีวิวเพิ่มเติม -> https://www.iamgolfz.com/software-dev...
สำหรับมือใหม่ที่เพิ่งหัดเขียน Golang หนังสือเล่มนี้เหมาะมากที่จะอ่านเป็นเล่มแรก ๆ เพราะมีรูปภาพประกอบการอธิบาย ให้เข้าใจได้ง่าย มีรูปอธิบายโค้ดแต่ละบรรทัด และโค้ดตัวอย่างก็ไม่ยาวจนเกินไป ผมคิดว่ารูปประกอบในหนังสือเล่มนี้ช่วยให้จำ syntax และเข้าใจหัวข้อต่าง ๆ ได้ง่ายขึ้นมาก
ในฐานะคนที่เขียน Golang มานานแล้ว ผมก็ชอบหนังสือเล่มนี้นะครับ ผมชอบวิธีอธิบาย ชอบรูปประกอบ เพราะช่วยให้เราจำสิ่งที่เรารู้อยู่แล้วได้ง่ายขึ้น และยังช่วยให้เราได้เทคนิคใหม่ ๆ เพื่อนำไปใช้อธิบายคนอื่นต่อได้ด้วย
รีวิวเพิ่มเติม -> https://www.iamgolfz.com/software-dev...
May 3, 2020
Great intro to Go!
Clear concise, and well paced. Easy to follow code examples will help you understand the core concepts. Setting up and using Go makes it a no-brainer for anyone looking to learn something new -as a c programmer it felt natural.
Clear concise, and well paced. Easy to follow code examples will help you understand the core concepts. Setting up and using Go makes it a no-brainer for anyone looking to learn something new -as a c programmer it felt natural.
April 9, 2019
Easy to follow. The book is just an early release. The current (as of Apr 9, 2019) last chapter is about the Interface.
April 27, 2020
Fantastic intro for Go! I'm thinking about switching to Go for technical interviews now xD
December 5, 2022
A perfect starter to the language. Don't expect in-depth. The exercises and the accompanying website are very good to get atop.
March 7, 2024
برای کسی که میخواد که میخواد گو رو به عنوان اولین زبان برنامهنویسی یاد بگیره، کتاب خیلی خوبیه.
December 10, 2025
Написано супер понятно, без сильного углубления, как обычно бывает в технических книгах, но в то же время дает хорошие понимание как устроен язык
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews