BelfastGophers Meetup

So of my Resolutions the one I've been worst at is going out and getting involved in the community via meetups etc. I've been to a couple so far this year and a conference (Agile in the City) but I know it's something I need to do a bit more of.

I've been tinkering with Go a little bit in my own time and really enjoyed it so I was really excited about the chance to go and talk to people who are using it as part of their day jobs as part of the Belfast Go Meetup.

I mentioned to one of the organizers that what I love about Go is that it feels like a dynamic language and in a lot of ways it reminds me of Ruby (I know! I'm a heretic). He told me that everyone he talks to identifies or associates go with their favourite or most used language. Not long after one of the speakers mentioned how easy Go was to pickup from Python and he felt there was a lot of similarities...These guys know their stuff.

So the actual meetup was an introduction to Go including setting up and installing. We covered the hello world before moving on to an echo application dealing with user input and then using the standard library to build a web server and lastly a putty like client. The progress over the night was great and the explanations were sound.

I had done a few of those things before myself but it was still nice to touch on them again and hear the explanations for some things. One of the reasons I enjoy getting to these events is the sometimes tangential topics that come up. Some of the ones that came up and will send me off looking for

Glide - Was mentioned as offering a dependency management solution for Go but it's something that's a little fractured in the community
Podge -  Seems like a scaffolder like yeoman but maybe a little lighter on function
Club-Mate Cola - I'm a weirdo who is very very into his soft drinks. The hosts of the evening, Farset Labs, had a number of drinks from Club Mate. Whilst I didn't quite get near them or the pizza they are on my list for next time :)

So long story short, if you're like me and normally a little wary of actually going to these events don't be. Everyone is friendly and there for the same reason. If you're in Belfast there's another Go Meetup next month and I'll hopefully see you there! If you're not in Belfast make a beeline for your local go meetup and experience a language that's an absolute joy to play with