Your first GO programming

There are several ways to start GO programming, but I will explain the most common way first.

  1. Download GO here and install it on your computer.

  2. Download an IDE such as VScode and GOLand, and install it. You will see the window below when you run the VScode the first time. Click Open Folder... on the screen (red box) and select a folder that you want to save your work. You can find Open Folder... in the menu below File (upper left corner).

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  3. I created a folder name \\go-example and opened it in VScode. You will see the screen below. Click Yes unless you know what you are doing.

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  4. The folder you selected in the beginning (/go-example in my case) is the root folder of the working environment. You will not allow to change the name of the root folder /. You can create a file by clicking the icon (red box below) right next to the name of the root folder. Click and name the file as main.go. It is the default name of a go file that compiles to an executable file.

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  5. Once you create the file, you will see a new editor window stacked on the right that shows the contents of the file (which is empty at first). Type the following and save to the file by clicking ctrl+s (⌘+s for mac os).

    package main

import "fmt"

func main() {
 	fmt.Println("Welcome to Advanced Calculus!")
}

  6. To run the code, click New Terminal in the Terminal menu on top. You will see that a new window appears on the bottom that shows a prompt screen.

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  7. Type go run main.go and hit enter. You will see the string Welcome to Advanced Calculus! appears on the next line and another prompt line begins. Well done!

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An alternative way to run GO

If you have any trouble following any steps above, there is a more simple way to start GO programming.

  1. Go to Replit and create an account. Once logged in, find and click the icon below.

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  2. You will see a pop-up window asking for info on the new repl. Select Go, then the title will be assigned at random. Change it on your will or not, and click + Create Repl button below.

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  3. You will be redirected to a webpage that looks similar to VScode. You will see that files main.go and go.mod are already created. The console window on the bottom right is the same as terminal in VScode. You can run the code by typing go run main.go just as same as we did before.

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