Let's Go - Book Review

2020 September 21

Originally Published 2020 September 21 on Dev.To

After getting my feet wet with Test Driven Development in Go, I decided to go through Let’s Go by Alex Edwards. My next step is to re-write my web app’s backend with Go, so this was the next logical step for me.

Alex shows you how to build a web application from start to finish. He walks the reader step-by-step through: * Setting up a server * RESTful Routing * Middleware * Database Connection * Templating * Testing (Unit, E2E, Integration)

He shows you from the very beginning how to do all this in a way that will keep your web app scalable, composable, etc. I really appreciated this since too many tutorials show you the simple way first and only later add in the clean up and refactoring. I find this way is better for setting up good habits.

While sprinkling advice and best practices throughout the book, He shows the reader exactly which files to create where, and where to put each bit of code for the web app. This is great for making sure you never get lost while following along.

Because all his code samples have in-depth comments explaining what each thing does, even if you mindlessly copied and pasted everything, you’d still end up with a great web app to go back and reference.

Code Sample

This is what I’m talking about. Each new piece of code or update includes comments like this.

If you’re on the fence, check out his blogs like this one on interfaces to see if you’ll like his teaching style.

But I highly recommend buying and reading this book if you’re interested in web development with Golang. It is absolutely worth the price. Check it out!