Are you ready to unlock the power of Go, master obviousness-oriented programming, and learn the secrets of Zen mountaineering? If so, The Power of Go: Tools is the perfect next step on your software engineering journey, explaining how to write simple, powerful, robust, and even delightful programs in Go. Includes free updates for life.

You can also buy this book at a discount as part of the Complete Go Library.

Reviews

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “Exactly the book I was looking for next! I love it.”
—Elliot Thomas

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “John’s books are phenomenal. Highly recommended.”
—Patrick Picard

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “Curse you for derailing my day with another fascinating book! The content is absolutely awesome.”
—Peter Nunn

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “Superb and well written: all the examples worked and were very helpful.”
—Lee Gibson

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “It's fantastic! I really like the approach.”
—Sal DiStefano

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “The book does a great job of teaching what to do with Go. I really liked the emphasis on testing.”
—Pedro Sandoval

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “What I really love about this book is it takes the newbie to the next level via real-world, relatable examples. The narrative flow clicks with me.”
—Rajaseelan Ganeswaran

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “It’s clear, concise, and practical, especially for folks like me who enjoy the art of making end-user tools with Go. It’s really made me think when I write code about how simple / easy I can make it for folks to use, without, as John likes to say ‘a lot of paperwork’.”
—Josh Feierman

About the book

This friendly, supportive, yet challenging book will show you how master software engineers think, and guide you through the process of designing production-ready command-line tools in Go step by step.

If we can figure out how to break down our unsolved problems into a bunch of mini-problems that have already been solved by existing packages, then we're 90% done.

How do you break down a problem into manageable chunks? How do you test functions before you've written them? How do you design reusable libraries and tools that delight users? These are all questions I’ve encountered many times, and (good news!) The Power of Go: Tools has the answers.

Table of contents

What you’ll learn

It may be fun and easy reading, but this book is also a serious challenge. At each stage there are problems for you to solve, code to write, and design questions to ponder.

Throughout the twelve chapters and 260+ pages, you'll be tested to your limits, as you learn the intricacies of flags and arguments, files and filesystems, commands, shells and pipelines, JSON and YAML wrangling, and even sophisticated API clients.

As we work together to develop increasingly powerful and delightful tools in Go, you'll learn how to test behaviour, not functions; how to reduce error-handling boilerplate and eliminate paperwork; and how to make sure the user is the one having fun.

What you get

Your digital download is a ZIP file containing the book in PDF and ePub formats. These should be suitable for any ebook reader, Kindle, computer, phone, or tablet.

Read a sample chapter

Updating to the latest edition

All my books come with free updates for life, so if you’ve bought a previous version of this book, here’s what you need to do to get the latest edition. Click the link in your original download email (make sure you save this, as it’s your key to future updates). You’ll see what looks like an error page saying your download link for the old edition has expired, but that’s okay: click the link in the text, and you’ll be sent a new download email for the current edition.