Welcome to “Getting started with Go”

Welcome everyone,

This presentation is based on a blog post I wrote Getting started with Go

What we’ll learn

• How to install the Go tool chain
• How to use the Go command
• Compile and run three programs
  • hello world
  • a simple web server
  • create a Markdown server

What you’ll need know

• A computer with a Terminal program
• Your favorite text editor
• Basic knowledge of your operating system (you need to be able to install Go)

Installing Go compiler and tool chain

Go to the URL, the Go for your computer and operating system.

https://go.dev/dl/

Follow the instructions to install it.

Begin with Hello World

• open a Terminal session
• create a directory called “helloworld”
• change to that directory, cd helloworld
• create a file called helloworld.go

Source Code

package main

import (
    "fmt"
) 

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

Running Hello World

go run helloworld.go

Compiling Hello World

go build helloworld.go

Congratulations!

Continuing with a Web Server

• create a new directory called webserver
• change into the directory called webserver
• create a file called webserver.go

Source Code

See https://pkg.go.dev/net/http#example-FileServer-DotFileHiding

Run Web Server

go run webserver.go

Compile Web Server

go build webserver.go

Things to notice

• documentation website for Go package
• http is a standard package
• Good packages have example code
• You have a handy little (fast) static web server

Wrapping up, putting things together

• Create our own package
• Create a Markdown server using both a standard and 3rd party package

mdserver

• open a Terminal session
• create a directory called “mdserver”
• create a directory called “cmd/mdserver”

create the following files

• markdown.go
• handler.go
  • https://rsdoiel.github.io/blog/2025/09/22/mdserver/handler.go
• cmd/mdserver/main.go
  • https://rsdoiel.github.io/blog/2025/09/22/mdserver/cmd/mdserver/main.go
  • put this in in the “cmd/mdserver/” directory

Or use curl to grab them.

curl -O https://caltechlibrary/presentations/mdserver/markdown.go
curl -O https://caltechlibrary/presentations/mdserver/handler.go
curl https://caltechlibrary/presentations/mdserver/cmd/mdserver/main.go \
  >cmd/mdserver/main.go

Initialize your package

go mod init 'github.com/caltechlibrary/mdserver'
go mod tidy

Pull in the goldmark package (Markdown)

go get "github.com/yuin/goldmark"

We use “go get” because this is not a standard library package.

Create a Markdown document to test with

# Hello World

This isn't HTML but you'll see HTML using mdserver

Save this as helloworld.md

Run mdserver

go run cmd/mdserver/main.go

Compile mdserver

go build -o bin/mdserver cmd/mdserver/main.go

Next steps

• Review this presentation, https://caltechlibrary.github.io/presentations/getting_started_with_go.html
• Read blog post, https://rsdoiel.github.io/blog/2025/09/22/getting_started_with_go.html
• https://go.dev/learn/
• https://pkg.go.dev/