Go Best Practices

✨ Go Best Practices

Write idiomatic, maintainable, and efficient Go code.

Code Organization

• Keep packages small and focused
• Use meaningful package names
• Avoid circular dependencies
• Place main packages in cmd/ directory
• Keep internal packages in internal/

Error Handling

// Good
if err != nil {
    return fmt.Errorf("failed to process: %w", err)
}

// Wrap errors with context
err := doSomething()
if err != nil {
    return fmt.Errorf("doSomething: %w", err)
}

Interface Design

• Accept interfaces, return structs
• Keep interfaces small (1-3 methods)
• Define interfaces where they're used
• Use embedded interfaces for composition

Concurrency Guidelines

• Don't communicate by sharing memory; share memory by communicating
• Use channels for orchestration, mutexes for state
• Start goroutines in the function that creates them
• Always handle goroutine cleanup

Performance Tips

• Measure before optimizing (use benchmarks)
• Preallocate slices when size is known
• Use sync.Pool for frequently allocated objects
• Avoid unnecessary allocations in hot paths
• Profile your application regularly

Testing Best Practices

• Write table-driven tests
• Use subtests for better organization
• Keep tests close to the code
• Use testdata/ for test fixtures
• Mock external dependencies