What is the best book to learn Go in 2023?

In this series fanale, I reveal my picks for the best books to learn Go in 2023, whether you're completely new to programming, or already have experience with one or more other languages. I also offer some additional recommendations, and commentary about the process that went into making these selections.

Check out my other Go resources!

Best overall: Learning Go by Jon Bodner

Best for the absolute beginner: For the Love of Go by John Arundel

Runner-Up, a great second book: Go Fundamentals by Mark Bates and Cory LaNou

Honorable mention: Learn Go with Pocket-Sized Projects by Aliénor Latour, Pascal Bertrand, and Donia Chaiehloudj

0:00 Intro
1:40 Why bother?
3:17 Why not write my own book?
4:11 Criteria
6:59 Surprises along the way
9:06 Teaching styles
11:47 Recommendations
11:50 Best Overall
14:27 Best for the absolute beginner
16:04 Runner-Up
18:15 Honorable mention
19:38 What's next?
20:39 Conclusion

[aum]

I’d like to see how the upcoming new edition of “Go in Action”, published by Manning, stacks up. The “in Action” series targets experienced developers, so I guess it would be worth considering it.

[TakumiSoldier]

Thank you for a very comprehensive review! I also like what I see in your bookshelf as a big The Godfather fan!😁

[alibinabdulwahab]

Hi. Thank you so much. Such a fantastic coverage of almost everything one would want to know about the book. This review of books will help me and many others a lot!

[jeffkayser]

Another book that is fantastic: Adam Woodbeck's book "Network Programming With Go: Code Secure and Reliable Network Services From Scratch". Adam is very experienced with Go networking, and it shows. He spends a good amount of time dealing with errors that are prevalent in distributed environments.

[Iongjump]

I recently finished reading "Leaning Go", thanks for your advice!

[eatsomeseaweed]

Thank you for your time and help! This is very useful! Subscribed and liked!

[stoneocelot]

Thank you for your work on the reviews! I really appreciate it! Subscribed!

[cmelgarejo]

jhall dropped a video, good Friday
And lets Gooo

[artyomby]

thanks. really helpful when you are looking for something to start with.

[filippomontecchio]

I started learning Go from the book The Go Workshop (v.a. - O'Reilly) but quickly got stuck on the explanations of anonymous interfaces and structs. Could you give us a review? Thanks for your work, very appreciated :D

[jeffkayser]

Katherine Cox-Buday's book "Concurrency in Go: Tools and Techniques for Developers" is a great book about Go concurrency. It's not a new book, but it covers Go concurrency very well, and that's a topic that is hard to get right. She gets it right.

[jasric]

I'll be interested in follow-up books. I just finished Head First Go by Jay McGavren, a very good book and was the first book, that I successfully read from cover to cover due to his writing and teaching style what lets the book down a bit though is it's out of date on a few things now and the author hasn't done an updated version. Yet I think it's still a great book and would recommend it to beginners. Sometimes in something not working you learn how it works.

[vahidmostofi]

Can you please also review the "100 Go Mistakes and How to Avoid Them"?
I've been reading it in the past few days (29/100 so far). It seems like an easy read to me since there are small batches I can read when I have some time to kill.
I also learned a lot from the notes and points. Love to hear what you think.

[GustavoDiaz]

I knew it hahaha this is the best by all means.

[nonefvnfvnjnjnjevjenjvonej]

The thing with language books which are intermediate and above have to do with how close they are to the ethos of the language. For example a node book which focuses on streaming and async programming. I remember Eloquent Ruby really fit this bill back in the day. I wonder if there is a Go book which is true to Go's ethos whatever that might be

[DiegoSandoval-csoo]

Now there's a second edition of Learning Go :)

[kreshj]

Thanks a lot for these reviews and conclusion video. I have little knowledge of Python and currently doing scripting/coding with PowerShell (API is coming around the corner and PowerShell doesn't feel the right tool for the job). While I'm still quite fresh I want a generally easy language to focus on without creating a environment like Python or Java.

With that said I think I'm not a complete 'newbe' but I know I never correctly learned the fundamentals of programming. After watching this video I checked some of the individual reviews of the books mentioned here. I must say I am a little bit hesitant to try any other book (as a beginner programmer) except "For the love of Go" and unsure where to go next after finishing that book.

The 'vibe' I was getting from your individual reviews about "Go Fundamentals" and "Learning Go", the latter felt the better book (and would expect to the "runner up"). Generally most books you had criticizing about I felt almost none of them could make it to be listed in this video. So It kinda feels like you are trying praising them but not really content with the books that are available and being up-to-date? Is that right or am I reading you wrong?

[anahr]

Thank you, I have a question, what is the next recommendation after For the love of Go as it not available right now in my country and thank you again

[Олександр-юн]

Thank you so much. "Pro Go" Adam Freeman is so still good ?

[nyantaro]

Would love to see Powerful Command-Line Applications in Go by Ricardo Gerardi