Golang - Pg. 3
Create a Golang Video Streaming Server Using HLS
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
In this tutorial, we'll go step-by-step through building a video streaming API (which will work for music as well) in Go. Don't worry, it's surprisingly easy to build a robust media streaming server, especially if we utilize a modern communication protocol, HLS.
Should You Return Empty or Nil Slices in Go?
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
In Go, we often need to return zero values. Idiomatic Go encourages the use of guard clauses, and guard clauses necessitate the need to return early. When returning early with an error, by convention all other return values should be zero values. The confusion arises with data types like maps and slices. Should maps and slices be returned as a simple nil value, or should an empty but instantiated value be returned?
Top 15 Golang Interview Questions [Updated 2026]
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
Let's take a look at some good technical questions to be familiar with, whether you are looking to nail your next Golang interview, or if you're the interviewer yourself..
Unexpected Printf Behavior in Go WASM - Nothing Prints
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
While working on boot.dev's Go Playground, I came across a very strange error. The standard library's fmt.Printf() function prints nothing to the console when called. Nothing.
Authenticate Users with "Sign In With Google" in Golang
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
Users love convenience. If your goal is to make it easy for users to register with your app or website, then implementing the "Sign in with Google" option should be at the top of your priority list. If you are like me, then you may find Google's documentation on the subject to be lackluster at best, and downright confusing at worst. Here we will go step-by-step through the authentication process so you can implement Google sign-in easily.
Rust Backend vs Go Backend in Web Development
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
Rust and Go are two of the industry's biggest successes when it comes to developing modern programming languages. Both languages compete in terms of backend web development, and it's a fierce competition. Golang and Rust are new languages, have growing communities, and are fast and efficient. When it comes to microservice architectures, frameworks, and apps, Rust and Go are household names on the backend.
Running Go in the Browser With Web Assembly (WASM)
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
If you are familiar with the Go Playground, then you know how convenient it is to be able to have a Go scratchpad in the browser. Want to show someone a code snippet? Want to quickly test some syntax? Browser-based code pads are helpful. On that note, I created a new playground. The cool thing about this new playground that it doesn't use a remote server to run code, just to compile it. The code runs in your browser using web assembly (WASM).
How to Make Maps in Go
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
Maps are similar to JavaScript objects, Python dictionaries, and Ruby hashes. Maps are a data structure that provides key-value mapping.
Go-CoNLLU - Some Much Needed Machine Learning Support in Go
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
Python is commonly seen as the AI/ML language, but is often a dull blade due to unsafe typing and being slow, like really slow. Many popular natural language processing toolkits only have Python APIs, and we want to see that change. At Nuvi, a social media marketing tool, we use Go for the majority of our data processing tasks because we can write simple and fast code. Today we are open-sourcing a tool that has helped make our ML lives easier in Go. Say hello to go-conllu.
Go's WaitGroup vs JavaScript's PromiseAll
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
In applications that are i/o heavy, it can get clunky to synchronously execute high-latency functions one after the other. For example, if I have a web page that needs to request seven files from the server before it can show the page, I need to asynchronously fetch all those files at the same time. The alternative of making each request one at a time will take much too long. This is where JavaScript's PromiseAll and Go's WaitGroup come in.
How to Sort a Slice in Go
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
Sorting is a common task in programming, and for that reason, most languages have a default sorting algorithm in their standard library. Go is one such language. Go has gone about providing sorting functionality in one of the most elegant ways possible, via an interface.
Don't Go To Casting Hell - Use Default Native Types in Go
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
Go is strongly typed, and with that, we get many options for simple variable types like integers and floats. The problem arises when we have a uint16, and the function we are trying to pass it into takes an int. We find code riddled with int(myUint16) that can become slow and annoying to read. In other words, when Go developers stray from the "default" type for any given type family, the code can get messy quickly.
Rust vs Go - Which Is More Popular?
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
Go and Rust are two of the hottest compiled programming languages, but which is more popular, Go or Rust?. I develop in Go full-time and love it, and I'm learning more about Rust recently - it's an exciting language. Let's explore some differences between the two and look at which is growing faster in the popularity polls.
Range Over Ticker In Go With Immediate First Tick
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
The Go standard library has a really cool type - Ticker. Tickers are used when you want to do something at a regular interval, similar to JavaScript's setInterval. Here's an example:
Using 'Go Generate' To Deploy Multi-Process Apps
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
In microservice architectures, it's fairly common to have a project that includes different worker types. A Makefile can be used to manage the creation of multiple programs, but the Go toolchain has a tool that can be used as well, go generate. Here are some examples of how it can be used:
What Are Golang's Anonymous Structs?
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
An anonymous struct is just like a normal struct, but it is defined without a name and therefore cannot be referenced elsewhere in the code.
Announcing Go-TinyTime, Go-TinyDate's Sister Package
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
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
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
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
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
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.
I Wrote Go-TinyDate, The Missing Golang Date Package
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
time.Time makes dealing with dates and times in Go a breeze, and it even comes bundled in the standard library! However, a time.Time{} struct uses more than 24 bytes of memory under most conditions, and I've run into situations where I need to store millions of them in memory, but all I really needed was a UTC date! Go-TinyDate solves this with just 4 bytes of memory.
Mutexes in Go
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
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.
Interfaces in Go
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
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
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
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
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
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
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
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.
