A language that doesn’t affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
~ Alan Perlis (American computer scientist, and the first winner of the Turing Award)

 

What Is This Essay All About? 🐙

Glad you asked! For one thing, this won’t be a boring treatise on some obscure aspects of the Go programming language—we don’t do boring stuff here in our Programming Digressions digs—as I value your time and intelligence far too much. For another, I want to keep the fun in there as we go about tackling diverse subjects while providing substantial value to you 💰

This time around, we’re going to explore exactly what it is that enables Go to pass what I’m going to call the Perlis test—”A language that doesn’t affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing”—with flying colors 🏁

Yo, what exactly is that impish-looking octopus doing up there in the pic? Hold on, hold on, everything will become clear in short order (Hint: Programming languages do not exist in a vacuum;  they are relevant only to the extent that they serve a great goal. On top of that, how can 296 million years of evolution be wrong? Or ever wonder how IoT is evolving like an octopus? Go straight to Item # 11 below—”Bringing Go To The IoT World”—if you just can’t wait to find out what this is all about!) 🐙

And, of course, read on if you are intrigued. Oh, and should your dear heart so desire, feel free to think of this essay as a sequel to the one which had appeared some moons ago, the far more prosaically-named prequel The Go Programming Language 🙊

With that, here’s a rundown of what’s coming your way today, right now, in fact:

1. Duck Typing 🐓
2. Duck Typing Redux 🗿
3. Paradise Regained 🎭
4. Of Object-orientation And The Platypus 🐌
5. Calming Down To The Soothing Rhythm Of… Unit Testing! ⛵
6. If You Fall, I Will Catch You, I’ll Be Waiting ⚾
7. Whew, Sprawling Hierarchies No More 🚧
8. Go, Your Own Way 🏄
9. The Widening Gyre Of Concurrency 🚅
10. Go’s Got Concurrency 👻
11. Bringing Go To The IoT World 🐙
12. Persistence In Go 💰
13. Go Can Be Sweet 🍯
14. Go Can Be Baffling (To The Uninitiated) 😱
15. Let Beautiful Designs Emerge 🌹
16. What About Recursion? 🌀
17. Things Explainer: You’re Kidding Me, Right? 📣
18. Things Explainer: Redux 📕
19. Go Forth And Smell The Roses 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹
20. Deep, Yet Simple 🐳

Meanwhile, just as we’re about to dive in to the essay proper—hey, the following interlude isn’t all that improper either—we find ourselves inadvertently eavesdropping on a lively dialog like so:

With that interlude under your belt—or sash, to be sure—and whether you are ready or not, off we go now on our mind-bending adventure 🚀

(As you may recall the premise at the outset—”A language that doesn’t affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing—I’ve taken the liberty of calling this “our mind-bending adventure”, and with good reason to back it up, as you’ll soon see!)

1. Duck Typing 🐓

So our adventure begins—as many adventures invariably do—early one morning in a sleepy suburb where we find ourselves in the home of a programmer (Yeah, try selling this adventure setting for a movie script!) Yep, as you’ll conclude from the happenings in the picture above, our perky programmer is about to sit down at the breakfast table (his lugubrious laptop and the oracular orchid waiting for him) 🌸

But oh my! We already got some creatures scuttling about the programmer’s laptop: One octopus, and two gophers, all three with designs on the apple square center. What’s up with that, we all collectively wonder… 😲

Not to worry, though; all becomes clear as soon as we spy the bash logo plastered to the laptop lid, right below the apple. But of course we knew it: Basically, the programmer is a gopher, right? 🐀

Well, we are getting warmer (and it’s pretty early on a weekend morning anyway) as it dawns upon us—such brilliance, oh my!—that our programmer must have lately been been writing programs in the Go programming language. Which brings me to ask the crucial question: “We’re all ready for duck typing, right?” 💻

2. Duck Typing Redux 🗿

How about a half-decent definition of whatever this “duck typing” thing is anyway? Glad you asked, as I’ve got a fabulous definition that can be found—along with a ton of other good stuff—in a fine book by William Kennedy, Brian Ketelsen, and Erik St. Martin. Using the springboard of good old interfaces, the three co-authors of Go in Action (Manning Publications) enlighten us like so:

That’s duck typing for you. How good is that? I couldn’t have put it any better myself! 🐝

My hope here is that you are warming up to my choice of this essay’s name (which is, ahem, Further Adventures In Go Land, in case you didn’t notice). But that’s only half of the story: Truth be told, I had seriously considered naming this essay: “Go bash the C Shell”.

Can you even imagine the kind of reception that would have created in the audience, given the swirling mists of confusion already enveloping us. But reason prevailed, and here we are, with an essay that’s got a far more prosaic title (namely, Further Adventures In Go Land).

(As for our jaunt into “Go Land”—and it’s tight (linguistic) connection with yet another awesome product from the minds at JetBrains—we simply don’t have room in this essay for catering to that…)

All fine and well, you say, but what’s up with that spoon-billed duck above?

Glad you asked: Our resident programmer—him of the sleepy suburban house—is coming down to his breakfast table and about to make everything as clear as mud, um, daylight, I meant to say! 🌞

Duck typing can be a beautiful thing, especially in programming; actually, only in programming (I have yet to see a duck doing any kind of decipherable typing. 🐒 Hmm… Come to think of it, I have heard of the phenomenon—one commonly afflicting us technology types—known as chicken scratch. But I digress) 🐓

3. Paradise Regained 🎭

It turns out that our programmer was pondering exactly that—duck typing and stuff like that—when he spied his favorite cereal on the table. Needless to say, the cereal had to be wolfed down first before we got anything out of the programmer (Hasn’t anyone told him just how overrated nutrition is? I mean, it’s right down there with sleep. But I digress again). Soon enough, though, our rejuvenated programmer has rubbed his eyes, and is awake enough to give us the scoop on duck typing 🐸

It goes something like this…

Yo, so in case you haven’t noticed, Go does not offer inheritance or sub-typing. But guess what? We do have interfaces, yay! Any and all functions that implement the methods of an interface thereby automatically satisfy the interface contract (This is done implicitly, with nothing additional to be done on the programmer’s part). Enter duck typing: “If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it’s a duck.” 🐥

Allow me to quote on this very subject from the canonical book on Go programming, again in the context of—you guessed it!—our beloved interfaces construct:

Many object-oriented languages have some notion of interfaces, but what makes Go’s interfaces so distinctive is that they are satisfied implicitly. In other words, there’s no need to declare all the interfaces that a given concrete type satisfies; simply possessing the necessary methods is enough. This design lets you create new interfaces that are satisfied by existing concrete types without changing the existing types, which is particularly useful for types defined in packages that you don’t control.

~ Alan A. A. Donovan, Brian W. Kernighan (The Go Programming Language — Addison-Wesley)

How cool is that? 😎

Noted Go programmer Lex Sheehan has aptly remarked in his fine book on bringing the functional programming paradigm to the practice of Go—yep, this is where the “Paradise Regained” subtitle above comes in—by leaning on the inimitable uniqueness that Go’s design brings in its wake, which is, frankly, a cornucopia of (design and implementation) possibilities that were simply not possible before it arrived on the scene:

One more time, just how cool is that? 😎

4. Of Object-orientation And The Platypus 🐌

Oohh… 😲

And what do we have on our hands now? Readers are like: Whoa, are we getting into the platypus metaphor with which early adopters of object-orientated programming got indoctrinated (more like pummeled)? Akram, Akram, we know you all right, so don’t you even think of pulling a fast one on us! 🎃

Okay, relax, here’s all that’s going on, as we find ourselves being enlightened by Tim Budd, a fine and upright professor of Computer Science at Oregon State University:

Imagine a big old class hierarchy—yep, one of those sprawling ones that seem to invariably inhabit the land of object-orientation—that includes people, mammals, and, most of all, Phillip the platypus who lives at the zoo 🐊 🐄 🐻 🐼 🐸 🐫 🐃 🐎 🐍 🐌

Stop already!!! 😱

Hey, relax, I was just trying to make a point that human cognition, more precisely how much we can keep in our head at any given time without losing track—anyone up for a slight detour into the intrigues of the mental construct that psychologists glibly refer to as “working memory”?—and the ways in which certain programming constructs and paradigms can tax that ability (of “working memory”, that is) 🙉

Enter the Go programming language in all its unadorned simplicity and sheer power… 💪

5. Calming Down To The Soothing Rhythm Of… Unit Testing! ⛵

In his best efforts to get the readers all calmed down (after that nerve-wracking brush with Phillip the platypus showing up in the inheritance hierarchy), the programmer has everyone sit around—you guessed it—his (not round, but rectangular) programming table. Then, asking everyone to take 10 deep breaths, he deftly pulls out his copy of the canonical Go book. Needless to say, the mere sight of the book’s tasteful cover has a remarkably soothing effect on the jangled nerves of the ragtag group 😻

On top of that, no sooner does our programmer plunk down his copy of The Tao of Microservices—its cover adorned by an illustration of the benevolently meditating beatific Emperor Reigen of Japan, the 112th emperor of Japan—than there is hushed silence. Time for yoga, everybody! 💁

Wait, yoga can wait… First, though, we’re going to chat a bit about—you guessed it—unit testing. After all, it all starts with testing—unit testing that is—so let’s go there… 🚕

As noted Go programmer Mat Ryer rightly notes in his online post on 5 simple tips and tricks for writing unit tests in #golang:

You owe it to yourself—as do I—to check out the word on unit testing, straight from the horse’s mouth 🐎

One more pointer while we’re on the topic of unit testing in Go: We can ideally put unit tests in the service of teasing apart design decisions themselves! For the very best on that, I do not know of a better resource than this one: Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests (by Steve Freeman and Nat Pryce — Addison-Wesley Professional)

(It’s example code is heavily in Java, but the ideas are universal and timeless) ⏳

6. If You Fall, I Will Catch You, I’ll Be Waiting ⚾

Ah, nothing like having a safety net to catch us when we fall, time after time—hey now, catching and hauling in some fish isn’t too bad either (I’ll confess that those tilapia taste the best, if that’s what those fishermen are hauling in!) 🐡

Yo, but what about my tidy inheritance hierarchies with objects all neatly nestled in their cozy containers? Glad you asked, because that’s where we go next 📦 📦 📦 📦 📦 📦

7. Whew, Sprawling Hierarchies No More 🚧

Loved that van Gogh quote, because it goes our way, the Go way—no, no, no, not Go away! I said the Go way, so you stay right there! 🍄

I mean, what’s there to not love about the philosophy of achieving great things—including the creation of great designs in software—through “a series of small things brought together”? I will go out on a limb and say that this is the whole Go philosophy: Composition is king 👑

See those tidy little organic cups in the pic above, fungal spores or whatever they are? Dare I ask, Do you find yourself re-creating equally, um, intricate hierarchies in your software designs and feel at times like tearing your hear out? Well… I think that it’s high time for us to revisit (and do something about the implications of) our assumptions about what flies—and what doesn’t—in the multi-core world which we now inhabit.

Yep, it’s no coincidence that functional programming has taken off in our industry 🚀

I’ve already written at length on this topic, so here I will merely point you in the direction of a couple of resources that will help you:

• What’s Up With Reactive Programming?
• When Object-Orientation Meets Functional Programming!

Wait a second, did I hear an owl hooting? 🌲

We really need to check out what’s going on… 🎬

8. Go, Your Own Way 🏄

Actually, speaking of owls…

Groan, we need more coffee, you all say. And I’m like, does this place look like a Starbucks or something? We are all morning larks here; sorry, all you owls out there 🐣

A word to the wise, in somewhat sheepishly pointing out the criticality of where the “comma” is placed, or not—as in there “Go, Your Own Way” or as it’s missing here in “Go Your Own Way“—we get totally different outcomes. Shall I elaborate, or will I be, heavens forbid, questioning your fine intelligence? 🎓

But first, what’s going on here? We… We hear these refrains 🎼

And then these, soon thereafter 🎶

So here’s the deal: See that sleepy owl up there? Try getting him to waddle out of his nest, let alone have him climb the highest mountain or—this is even more outlandish—run through the fields 🏃

And as for this sleep-deprived owl driving a thousand miles—that’s Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris who appear elsewhere in another essay—sheesh, let’s not even go there!

Actually, now that I think about it, with the era of self-driving cars dawning upon us, we could have our owl simply sit behind the steering wheel (more like perched on it!) in a car and be chauffeured a thousand miles 🚕

That would do it: Hey, now how about that?

Where I was going with all that was simply this: I have a hunch that the Go programming language will come to play one role or another in helping make self-driving cars in reality.

But I digress🚶

9. The Widening Gyre Of Concurrency 🚅

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
~ William Butler Yeats (from his inimitable poem The Second Coming)

Tell you what, let’s all collectively digress before resuming our adventure in earnest: And what could be better than regaling in a marvelous poem or two by W H Auden?

What?! “I’d rather listen to Eminem,” you say … (Sigh, you can’t win ’em all) 🎷

As noted Go programmer Katherine Cox-Buday has cogently argued in her fine book entitled Concurrency in Go: Tools and Techniques for Developers (O’Reilly Media), the key thing to keep in mind is that

Yep, hence my reference (in the subtitle above) to “The Widening Gyre Of Concurrency” 🎯

(And hey, to all of you who didn’t immediately write me off for using that seemingly fanciful subtitle, I thank you for placing your trust in me!)

10. Go’s Got Concurrency 👻

Okay, so here is the programmer’s best effort to convey the essence of concurrency—in Go or, for that matter, in any other programming language you care to name (Provided, of course, that the given language has support for concurrency. I mean, concurrent FORTRAN? Gimme a break) 🙉

For the final word on how to approach concurrency during the practice of Go  programming, I refer you again to

Don’t miss Katherine’s fine book—immensely readable; simply invaluable 👍

11. Bringing Go To The IoT World 🐙

You knew that the octopus—more like the octopi as in the pic above—with whose tentacles we had a close brush earlier was going to pop up (again) unannounced, anytime. And so it is that you’re going to find an octopus sprawling about in the background of the homepage for this incredible open-source project whose latest version is based on a Go implementation:

EdgeX Foundry™: The Open Interop Platform for the IoT Edge

It’s essentially a vendor-neutral open source project building a common open framework for IoT edge computing (It’s hosted by The Linux Foundation, and I happen to be a committer) 🔨

Here’s the scoop—meanwhile I just caught myself drifting to visions of Baskin-Robbins ice cream scoops there for a few moments!—lifted straight from the EdgeX home page, a place where you can find plenty of other cool details as well 🍦

One more thing—Check out an intriguing take on exactly why it is that an octopus was chosen for branding the EdgeX project 🐙

And since we are speaking of the highly evolved animal kingdom, let’s check out what’s up with another member of the kingdom, our feathered friend in the pic coming right up 🐝

12. Persistence In Go 💰

You’ve got to doggedly keep at it. Persistence—no, not that kind of persistence—is the name of the game when it comes to grokking the Go programming paradigm. I mean, just check out that bird gnawing away at a… bicycle seat, goodness gracious! Yo, bird, you don’t have to be that destructive either! How much nutrition does that bicycles offer, for crying out loud? (This coming from a diet-conscious, nutritionally-aware programmer) 🍔 🍕 🍟 🍰 🍭 🍩 🍪

My thinking in this area—as it applies to Go—is currently evolving. Yep, you guessed it: this section is under heavy construction until further notice 🚧

As a prelude (to the heavy construction underway), though, I won’t stop you from checking out the following two engaging resources

• The Joys Of Eventual Consistency 
• Purely Functional Data Structures

Enjoy 🙌

13. Go Can Be Sweet 🍯

This is how sweet and free of fear
I feel now in myself. Beyond opinion and judgment, undistracted by guilt,
I am walking strong and steadily home,
not timid or uncertain,
with my eyes splendidly clear,
all one pearl of gratefulness, no fear.

~ Jelaluddin Rumi (in the translation by Coleman Barks entitled The Essential Rumi — Published by HarperOne) 

I knew it, I just knew it: One of you smart Alecs (or Alexas) out there can—at this very moment—barely restrain herself from pointing out our programmer’s, shall we say, propensity for doughnut consumption (I am on my knees here, begging you to please not check out my ramblings on Kafka at the preceding coordinates) 😰

But we’ve got you covered; just check out the M&M bounty above (And no, this has nothing to do with Eminem, okay? I’ve already had enough with people not warming up to the loveliness that is the poetry of the one and only W H Auden: Dare I add that, yes, you’re right, this essay is semi—autobiographical, so there!) 🎭

And yes, Go can be sweet 🌹

14. Go Can Be Baffling (To The Uninitiated) 😱

What in the world—actually more like, what on the branch—is that? Is that a bird of paradise or something? I dunno. Do I look like an ornithologist? But with its head gingerly tilted to one side, it sure looks baffled 🐝

Anyhow, once you get the lay of the land of Go—for example the notion that the package is the unit of encapsulation or the philosophy to share by communicating instead of communicating by sharing—programming in Go can be dead simple 💀

No more bafflement, I say: I recommend that you check out this fine resource 💰

15. Let Beautiful Designs Emerge 🌹

Beautiful designs will emerge invariably from simplicity, and not from deeply nested—read deeply convoluted—hierarchies of objects 💠

16. What About Recursion? 🌀

Yes, what about it? 😉

A bit exhausted from all this intense talk, we decide to take a break from our adventure: We head for that inviting sofa in the corner. But, wait a second, the impish octopus—and the two gophers—are still in close pursuit of us. Sheesh, can’t seem to shake them loose, dude!

All is not lost, though: Check out that enterprising Matryoshka doll standing upright, and that, too, right next to the glorious bash logo (Man, this doll’s got style, and good taste, I’m telling you!) 🏄

Barely have we finished sizing up the situation than we spy some shrubbery ambling down the banister just above the sofa… 🌿

Oh my, this is no time for taking a breather. I know, I know—I hear you say— just tell that to the dreamy, porcelain-encrusted dude in the pic below! 😴 He’s either in a ruminating reverie or else thinking deep thoughts on concurrent design solutions (in the Go programming language of course).

My thinking in this area—as it applies to Go—is currently evolving. Yep, you guessed it: this section is under heavy construction until further notice 🚧

17. Things Explainer: You’re Kidding Me, Right? 📣

What we really need is someone to make sense of all this, and explain away in simple terms: You guessed it, Things Explainer to the rescue. Imagine…

So let’s turn to exactly that, which is coming up by way of the next pic…

This section, meanwhile, is under heavy construction until further notice 🚧

18. Things Explainer: Redux 📕

Explaining Metaphysics to the nation–
I wish he would explain his Explanation 😉
~ Lord Byron (from Don Juan: Dedication)

But what, you ask, is that DVD—is that really Out of Africa?—doing there, jostling cheek to jowl with our trusty Things Explainer. Once again, glad you asked…

As it turns out, this section, too, is under heavy construction until further notice 🚧  

19. Go Forth And Smell The Roses 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹

Every rose has its thorn
Just like every night has its dawn
Just like every cowboy sings his sad, sad song
Every rose has its thorn

~ Poison (Lyrics from Every Rose Has Its Thorn)

So here we are in the end, smelling like roses; see, didn’t I tell you, this was going to be an adventure with a happy ending? But you haven’t yet talked about some of the more intricate aspects of Go, I hear you say. And right you are (as always, I tell myself, over and over again, that the customer—you, dear reader—is king), because around here, you get to call the shots, now and forever 🎯

That’s my stance anyway. So there.

Speaking of roses—and yes, every rose has its thorn—a thorn had been gnawing at my side: Anyone recall the conversation, apocryphal or not, at the outset when we had found ourselves eavesdropping on a lively dialog involving a recalcitrant reader and yours truly? Maybe it was just a pipe dream after all 💸

Yo, why would I make such an assertion like that? Here’s why, it’s readers like you who keep me going—an Energizer Bunny I am not, so I, too, need some motivation from time to time:

Yep, comments such as this one (from a couple of days ago) and these ones (from many more moons ago) start my fire 🎉 🌋 🔥

You’re the best, thank you! 💎

20. Deep, Yet Simple 🐳

That’s how I’m finding Go to be. To put that into, context, check out this quote—Oh, I love this quote 💝

And who shall have the last word: Me (your unceremoniously casual writer) or the Go gopher (check out the tuxedoed Go gopher in the pic below, his hair all combed-back slick like Johhny Depp, with gobs of da real thang, that LA Looks hair-stylin’ gel) 🐀

Look, I don’t stand a chance against that dude, not even if I pull out my best gangsta sentences… When it comes to competing with the mighty Go gopher, I’m already sober, reminding myself as I do of the sage advice that👺

Your honor, I rest my case 💼