Golangs - Pg. 3

Announcing Go-TinyTime, Go-TinyDate's Sister Package

Apr 02, 2020 by Lane Wagner

time.Time is the perfect choice for handling times in Go in most cases, it even comes in the standard library! The problem is that the time.Time{} struct uses more than 24 bytes of memory under most conditions. Go-TinyTime solves this problem by restricting the available dates to the range between 1970 - 2106, and only supporting UTC timezones. This brings data usage down to just 4 bytes of memory.

Golang Conversions - Ints To Strings And Strong Typing

Mar 31, 2020 by Lane Wagner

Go is a strongly typed language, which means at any point a developer should know exactly what type of value they are dealing with. For example, if we have a function that prints a string, we can’t just give it an integer and expect it to work. We have to cast it to a string explicitly:

How To Separate Library Packages in Go

Mar 29, 2020 by Lane Wagner

I’ve often seen, and have been responsible for, throwing code into packages without much thought. I’ve quickly drawn a line in the sand and started putting code into different folders (which in Go are different packages by definition) just for the sake of findability. Learning to properly build small and reusable packages can take your Go career to the next level.

How to Use Mutexes in Go

Mar 19, 2020 by Lane Wagner

Golang is King when it comes to concurrency. No other language has so many tools right out of the box, and one of those tools is the standard library’s sync.Mutex{}. Mutexes let us safely control access to data across multiple goroutines.

Best Practices for Interfaces in Go

Mar 15, 2020 by Lane Wagner

Interfaces in Go allow us to treat different types as the same data type temporarily because both types implement the same kind of behavior. They’re central to a Go programmer’s toolbelt and are often used improperly by new Go developers, which leads to unreadable and often buggy code.

Wrapping Errors in Go - How to Handle Nested Errors

Mar 09, 2020 by Lane Wagner

Errors in Go are a hot topic. Many newcomers to the language immediately level their first criticism, “errors in go are clunky! Let me just use try/catch!” This criticism is well-meaning but misguided.

JWT Authentication in Golang

Feb 20, 2020 by Lane Wagner

Go is becoming very popular for backend web development, and JWT’s are one of the most popular ways to handle authentication on API requests. In this article, we’ll go over the basics of JWT’s and how to implement a secure authentication strategy in Go!

BitBanged SPI in Go, An Explanation

Jan 09, 2020 by Lane Wagner

I’m going to focus mostly on some design decisions and also how I went about writing an SPI interface using Go on a Raspberry Pi. I assume my readers have a basic understanding of what a Raspberry Pi is, and how basic electronics work. If not, read on anyway and I will be sure to include some valuable resources below.

Top 6 Golang Logging Best Practices

Jan 07, 2020 by Lane Wagner

Let’s discuss a few rules of thumb for logging in Go, as well as some features you may not have heard of that can make debugging easier. Best practices for logging in Go are not so obvious and sometimes we need to look closer to see what is the best choice, considering the unique situation of error handling in Go.

How to Create Constant Maps, Slices, & Arrays in Golang

Oct 21, 2019 by Lane Wagner

The quick answer is that Go does not support constant arrays, maps or slices. However, there are some great workarounds.

The Proper Use of Pointers in Go (Golang)

Sep 25, 2019 by Lane Wagner

Go has become increasingly popular in recent years, especially in my local area. It has been consistently displacing other backend languages like Ruby, Python, C# and Java. Go is wanted for its simplicity, explicitness, speed, and low memory consumption.