The purpose of this test drive is to understand the setup and capabilities of the Go programming language. Before wasting your time, take a look at the resources used to fuel this test drive.

• The Go Programming Language Documentation
• Go by Example

To easily install, manage, and work with multiple Go versions, install Go Version Manager with these instructions.

Prepend to your ~/.bash_profile:

[[ -s "$HOME/.gvm/scripts/gvm" ]] && source "$HOME/.gvm/scripts/gvm"

Reload your profile:

$ source ~/.bash_profile

Install latest Go version:

$ gvm install go1.4

Set as default:

$ gvm use go1.4 --default

To lint your code, install Golint.

$ go get -u github.com/golang/lint/golint

Append to your ~/.vimrc to print style mistakes after a save:

" https://github.com/golang/lint#vim
set rtp+=$GOPATH/src/github.com/golang/lint/misc/vim
autocmd BufWritePost,FileWritePost *.go execute 'Lint' | cwindow

To view your program documentation, install GoDoc.

$ go get -u golang.org/x/tools/cmd/godoc

Refer to the Godoc: documenting Go code blog post for some background and comment convention.

For other awesome tools, check out Go Tools.

Write a program and use run:

$ go run src/testdrive/main.go

Compile your source code using build:

$ go build -o bin/testdrive src/testdrive/main.go

Run:

$ ./bin/testdrive

• Basics - Importing packages, variables, functions, etc.