programming-go

# Programming Go

## Instructions

- Don't use `interface{}` -- use `any` instead

- Use the "-" tag when Marshalling JSON will cause the field to be omitted. Use this when we have private data on a field that’s meant to be excluded from an API response.

- Use the Go 1.22 syntax for `for` loops:

Write this:

```go
for i := range 10 {
    fmt.Println(i+1)
}
```

NOT THIS:

```go
for i := 1; i <= 10; i++ {
    fmt.Println(i)
}
```

- Use the Go 1.25 `waitgroup.Go` function that lets you add Go routines to a waitgroup more easily. It takes the place of using the go keyword, it looks like this:

```go
wg.Go(func() {
    // your goroutine code here
})
```

```go
The implementation is just a wrapper around this:
func (wg *WaitGroup) Go(f func()) {
    wg.Add(1)
    go func() {
        defer wg.Done()
        f()
    }()
}
```

### Renaming Packages

You can use Go’s LSP to rename packages, not just regular variables. The newly named package will be updated in all references. As a bonus, it even renames the directory!

### Package names

Good package names are short and clear. They are lower case, with no under_scores or mixedCaps. They are often simple nouns, such as:

- time (provides functionality for measuring and displaying time)
- list (implements a doubly linked list)
- http (provides HTTP client and server implementations)

The style of names typical of another language might not be idiomatic in a Go program. Here are two examples of names that might be good style in other languages but do not fit well in Go:

- computeServiceClient
- priority_queue

_Abbreviate judiciously_. Package names may be abbreviated when the abbreviation is familiar to the programmer. Widely-used packages often have compressed names:

- strconv (string conversion)
- syscall (system call)
- fmt (formatted I/O)

On the other hand, if abbreviating a package name makes it ambiguous or unclear, don’t do it.

Similarly, the function to make new instances of ring.Ring — which is the definition