package main
import "fmt"
func main() {
fmt.Println("Hello, World!")
}
Ask the right questions to secure the right Go talent among an increasingly shrinking pool of talent.
Go, also known as Golang, is a statically typed, compiled programming language developed by Google engineers Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, and Ken Thompson in 2007. It was publicly announced in 2009 and is designed for efficiency and ease of use with features such as garbage collection and support for concurrent programming. Noted for its simplicity and speed, Go has been used to develop some of the most popular software like Docker and Kubernetes. The language's standard library provides robust support for a variety of functionalities including web server development. Go's open-source nature allows developers worldwide to contribute to its growth and evolution.
The next 20 minutes of the interview should attempt to focus more specifically on the development questions used, and the level of depth and skill the engineer possesses.
Pointers in Go are used to hold the memory address of a value. The type *T is a pointer to a T value. The zero value of a pointer is nil. We use the & operator to generate a pointer to its operand and the * operator to denote the pointer's underlying value.
The zero value is the default value for a variable declared without an explicit initial value. For example, the zero value for numerical types is 0, for booleans it's false, and for strings it's an empty string.
Variables in Go can be declared using the 'var' keyword. For example: var x int. You can also declare and initialize a variable at the same time, for example: var x int = 10. If the variable is inside a function, you can use the short assignment statement := for declaring and initializing.
Go has several types including bool, string, int, int8, int16, int32, int64, uint, uint8, uint16, uint32, uint64, uintptr, byte, rune, float32, float64, complex64, complex128.
You can download the binary release suitable for your system from the official Go website. After downloading, you can extract the archive and set the environment variables like GOROOT, GOPATH, and PATH.
This is important as these methodologies are commonly used in software development and can improve team productivity and efficiency.
This is crucial in ensuring the candidate can create reliable and bug-free code.
Go is well-known for its simplicity in handling concurrent programming. A good Go developer should be comfortable with this concept.
This is important as the main role of a developer is to solve problems using the tools at their disposal.
This is important as it shows that the candidate can leverage existing tools to speed up development and improve code quality.
This is necessary as a strong foundation in the language is crucial for the role.
The next 20 minutes of the interview should attempt to focus more specifically on the development questions used, and the level of depth and skill the engineer possesses.
Channels are the pipes that connect concurrent goroutines. You can send values into channels from one goroutine and receive those values into another goroutine. Create a new channel with make(chan val-type). Channels are typed by the values they convey.
Goroutines are functions or methods that run concurrently with other functions or methods. Goroutines are lightweight threads managed by the Go runtime. You can start a goroutine simply by adding the keyword go before a function call.
Go uses a special built-in error type to handle errors. A function that might return an error has it as its last return value. If the error is nil, no error happened. Otherwise, the error contains a description of what went wrong. This approach makes it easy to see which functions return errors and to handle them using the same language constructs employed for any other, non-error tasks.
Structs are a way to group together variables of different types. They're useful when you want to create types that contain several pieces of related information. You can declare a struct using the type and struct keywords, and access its fields using dot notation.
Arrays have a fixed size while slices are dynamically sized. Slices, in fact, are more common in Go than traditional arrays. Slices are built on top of arrays and provide more power, flexibility, and convenience compared to arrays.
A proficient Go engineer should demonstrate excellent knowledge of Go language syntax, experience with Go's standard library and multithreading, and strong problem-solving skills. Red flags include inability to explain concepts clearly, lack of real-world application examples, or struggles with basic Go syntax and principles.
package main
import "fmt"
func main() {
fmt.Println("Hello, World!")
}
package main
import "fmt"
func main() {
var a int = 10
var b int = 20
fmt.Println(a + b)
}
package main
import "fmt"
func main() {
arr := []int{1, 2, 3, 4, 5}
for _, v := range arr {
fmt.Println(v)
}
}
package main
import (
"fmt"
"sync"
)
var wg sync.WaitGroup
func worker() {
fmt.Println("Worker function executed")
wg.Done()
}
func main() {
wg.Add(1)
go worker()
wg.Wait()
}
package main
import "fmt"
type Employee struct {
Name string
Age int
}
func main() {
emp := Employee{Name: "John", Age: 30}
fmt.Println(emp)
}
package main
import (
"fmt"
"sync"
"time"
)
func worker(id int, wg *sync.WaitGroup) {
defer wg.Done()
time.Sleep(time.Second)
fmt.Printf("Worker %d done\n", id)
}
func main() {
var wg sync.WaitGroup
for i := 1; i <= 5; i++ {
wg.Add(1)
go worker(i, &wg)
}
wg.Wait()
}
The final few interview questions for a Go candidate should typically focus on a combination of technical skills, personal goals, growth potential, team dynamics, and company culture.
There are several ways to optimize a Go application for performance. These include using the built-in profiling tools to identify bottlenecks, optimizing memory allocation by reusing objects or reducing allocations, using buffered I/O operations, optimizing CPU usage by using goroutines for concurrent tasks, and fine-tuning garbage collection.
Interfaces in Go provide a way to specify the behavior of an object. If something can do this, then it can be used here. Interfaces are defined as a set of function signatures, and any type that implements those functions is said to implement the interface.
Go has a built-in testing tool called 'go test'. You can write test functions alongside your code in *_test.go files. These functions should start with the word Test and take one argument, a pointer to the testing.T context. If the test fails, call t.Error or t.Fail.
The select statement is used to choose from multiple send/receive channel operations. It blocks until one of its cases can run, then it executes that case. If multiple cases are ready it chooses one at random. This is useful when you want to wait for data from multiple channels.
Unbuffered channels block the sender until the receiver has received the value, while buffered channels only block the sender when the buffer is full. Similarly, they block the receiver when the buffer is empty.
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