9 Best Go (Golang) Courses for 2024
Here is a guide with the best online courses, tutorials and resources to learn Go, a statically-typed, compiled programming language designed by Google engineers.
In this article, I’ve picked the best online courses, tutorials, and resources to learn Go, a high-level programming language with the fast performance of a low-level language. It was designed at Google as a statically-typed and compiled programming language, and specially tailored to make concurrency easy-to-write. It is used to create all sorts of programs, from small personal scripts to large cloud-based applications. All the courses in this guide are free or free-to-audit, except for one.
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What is Go?
Go (sometimes incorrectly called Golang) is a statically-typed, compiled programming language designed by Google engineers Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, and Ken Thompson.
It is known for having the natural syntax of dynamic languages like Python or Ruby but with the efficient performance of compiled languages like C or C++. Go is open source, and was created to provide first-class support for concurrency and parallelism to take full advantage of multicore processors and are often clumsy to write in other languages.
Go is a high-level language that has features like object-oriented programming (although not fully) and memory management using garbage collection, but also supports low-level features like pointers, although it disables pointer arithmetics to prevent headaches down the road.
According to the TIOBE index, Go is the 7th most popular programming language, and is expected to rise even further. Go is a lucrative language for developers looking to advance their skills and careers. It is a general-purpose language, so it can be written for lightweight microservices to scalable and large software systems. Data on Glassdoor shows that the estimated total pay for a Golang Developer is $173K+ per year.
Why You Should Trust Us
Class Central, a Tripadvisor for online education, has helped 60 million learners find their next course. We’ve been combing through online education for more than a decade to aggregate a catalog of 200,000 online courses and 200,000 reviews written by our users. And we’re online learners ourselves: combined, the Class Central team has completed over 400 online courses, including online degrees.
Courses Overview
- In total, the courses account for 178,998 enrollments.
- All of the courses except one are free, free-to-audit or free limited–access.
- 6 of the courses are beginner–friendly, whereas three are for experienced programmers.
- Around 800+ people follow Class Central’s Go Courses Subject.
Best University-Level Go Course for Experienced Programmers (University of California, Irvine)
Getting Started with Go by the University of California, Irvine is a free-to-audit course designed for anyone with previous programming experience who wants to get a feel of the Go programming language. You’ll explore data types, protocols, formats, and writing code that incorporates RFCs and JSON. By the end of the course, you’ll have the basics needed to implement simple Go programs.
What you’ll learn:
- Introduction to Go’s unique aspects and setting up the Go environment
- Writing a simple “Hello, World” program and understanding Go’s concurrency model
- Basic data types in Go: integers, floats, strings, and pointers for memory allocation
- Garbage collection and control flow structures in Go
- Composite data types: arrays, slices, maps, and structs
- Standardized protocols and formats: remote function calls (RFCs) and JSON
- Writing routines to access and manipulate data from external files.
| Institution | University of California, Irvine |
| Provider | Coursera |
| Part of | Programming with Google Go Specialization |
| Instructor | Ian Harris |
| Level | Intermediate |
| Workload | 8–12 hours |
| Enrollments | 70K |
| Rating | 4.6 / 5.0 (2K) |
| Exercises | Quizzes and peer-graded assignments (for paying learners) |
| Certificate | Paid |
Best Article-Based Go Course for Experienced Programmers (Microsoft Learn)
Take your first steps with Go created by Microsoft provides a free certificate. You’ll learn the basic syntax and thought processes required to build simple programs in Go. By the end, you’ll be able to write programs that take advantage of your processor’s multithreading capabilities.
To take this course, you need some familiarity with at least one programming language.
What you’ll learn:
- History and key features of Go
- Installing and configuring Go, and writing a “Hello, World!” application
- Basic data types, variables, functions, and control structures in Go
- Advanced data handling with defer, panic, and recover functions
- Creating reusable packages
- Working with aggregate types: arrays, slices, maps, and structs
- Error handling and logging
- Object-oriented programming principles: encapsulation, composition, interfaces, and methods
- Concurrency in Go
- Writing and testing a complete Go program.
Microsoft Learn is a free, online training platform that provides interactive learning for Microsoft products and programming languages, like C++, C#, Python, and TypeScript. They also provide exam certifications.
| Institution | Microsoft |
| Provider | Microsoft Learn |
| Level | Intermediate |
| Workload | 5–6 hours |
| Rating | 4.8 / 5.0 (2.4K) |
| Exercises | Coding exercises |
| Certificate | Free |
Best Video Course for Beginners With Exercises (Vilito Exquisitus)
Golang for Tourists is a free introductory course to the Go Programming Language. It highlights the major features of Go — concurrency, memory management, exception-handling, and the like — and teaches you how to program with these features.
No programming experience is required to take this course.
What you’ll learn:
- Setting up the Go development environment
- Typical structure of a Go application and organizing code in packages
- Basic programming concepts: data types (booleans, strings), control statements (if, for), and functions
- Advanced data types: arrays, slices, maps, and structs
- Concurrency in Go: using Goroutines and channels
- Pointers in Go and their applications
- Interfaces and handling data input/output in files and network programming.
| Channel | Vilito Exquisitus |
| Provider | YouTube |
| Instructor | Rob Adams |
| Level | Beginner |
| Workload | 19–20 hours |
| Views | 12K |
| Exercises | Lab for each section + solutions |
| Certificate | None |
Best Concise Go Course for Beginners (karanpratapsingh.com)
In this free course, you’ll master the fundamentals and advanced features of the Go programming language. You’ll start from the beginning and work your way up to proficiency. The course is written in simple English and is accompanied by intuitive examples, which makes it suitable for anyone weak in English.
No programming experience is required to take this course.
What you’ll learn:
- History of Go and setting up the development environment
- Structure of a Go program and writing a “Hello World!” script
- Basics: variables, data types, control flow, and functions
- Code organization: modules, packages, and workspaces
- Advanced data structures: pointers, arrays, slices, and maps
- Methods defined on data structures
- Higher-level concepts: interfaces, generics, error-handling, and code-testing
- Concurrency with goroutines and channels
- Advanced concurrency patterns used in real-world applications.
| Website | karanpratapsingh.com |
| Instructor | Karan Pratap Singh |
| Level | Beginner |
| Workload | 2–4 hours |
| Certificate | None |
Best Interactive Go Course for Experienced Programmers To Get Started (The Go Project)
From the creators of the Go programming language themselves, A Tour of Go covers the main features of Go that any interested developer should know. By the end of the free interactive course, you’ll have the basics down along with other more advanced concepts like interfaces, generics, and concurrency.
To take this course, you’ll need some prior knowledge of programming.
What you’ll learn:
- Structure of Go programs: packages, importing, defining variables, and declaring functions
- Flow control statements: for, if, else, switch, and defer
- Defining custom types with structs and using composite data types: arrays, slices, and maps
- Defining methods on types and declaring interfaces
- Support for generic programming and type-oriented programming
- Concurrency in Go: using goroutines and channels
- Employing different concurrency patterns in coding.
| Institution | The Go Project |
| Level | Intermediate |
| Workload | 1–2 hours |
| Certificate | None |
Best for Practicing Go Through Hands-On Exercises (Exercism)
Exercism is a free online coding platform where you can practice your Go coding skills through well-designed programming exercises. As a learning developer, it is important that you cultivate your skills through hands-on exercises.
The best thing about this platform is that you’ll receive free personal mentoring. When you have solved an exercise, you’ll receive personalized feedback about your code. I can’t stress how helpful this is, especially for new programmers since they don’t have the programming experience yet to judge the quality of their own code.
Programmers of all levels of experience can find an exercise that’s just the right amount of difficulty for them, as exercises range from easy to challenging.
What you’ll learn:
- Basics of Go programming: printing “Hello, World!”, data types (integers, strings, booleans), conditionals, loops, raising exceptions, and enumerations
- Practicing skills through exercises of varying difficulty: easy, medium, and hard
- Easy exercises: calculating Hamming difference, determining isograms, checking leap years
- Medium exercises: error handling, resource management, simulating a bank account, tree building algorithms
- Challenging exercises: reactive programming paradigm, simple evaluator for Forth
- Self-paced learning with 135 hands-on programming exercises
- Automatic analysis and personal mentoring for feedback and improvement.
| Institution | Exercism |
| Level | All Levels |
| Workload | Self-paced |
| Enrollments | 117K |
| Mentors | 1,627 |
| Certificate | None |
Best Text-Based Go Course for Beginners (practical-go-lessons.com)
Practical Go Lessons is an excellent free introduction for beginners to the world of programming in general through the lens of Go. It teaches important computer science concepts that all programmers need to know to write and understand efficient code.
No programming experience is required to take this course.
What you’ll learn:
- Understanding what a program is and the four hardware components of a computer
- History and motivations behind the Go language
- Setting up the Go development environment
- Different numeral systems (binary) and encoding systems (Unicode)
- Variables, constants, and basic data types
- Control statements and functions for code reuse
- Code organization with Go packages and modules
- Data structures: pointers, arrays, slices, and maps
- Advanced Go concepts: error handling, logging, anonymous functions, and concurrency
- Concurrent programming patterns and object-oriented programming.
| Website | practical-go-lessons.com |
| Instructor | Maximilien Andile |
| Level | Beginner |
| Workload | 6–10 hours |
| Exercises | End-of-chapter questions |
| Certificate | None |
Best Interactive Go Course for Beginners (Codecademy)
Codecademy’s Learn Go covers the fundamentals of Go. By the end of the free limited-access course, you’ll be able to build simple Go programs.
No prior knowledge of programming is required to take this course.
What you’ll learn:
- Introduction to how programs work and Go’s code organization
- Using the Go compiler and running compiled programs
- Creating and storing values in variables and understanding different data types
- Using the fmt package to get user input and display output
- Controlling program flow with boolean expressions and conditionals
- Defining and calling functions, and passing arguments
- Understanding memory addresses and pointers.
| Institution | Codecademy |
| Level | Beginner |
| Enrollments | 137K |
| Rating | 4.6 (1.3K) |
| Workload | 9 hours |
| Exercises | Three projects and quizzes (for paying learners) |
| Certificate | Paid |
Best Comprehensive Go Course for Both New and Experienced Programmers (Udemy)
If you’re looking for an awesome paid resource for both new and experienced programmers, this course is for you.
In this comprehensive Udemy course, you’ll learn everything you need to know to program in Go and then some. It is chock full of exercises to help the fledgling programmer spread their wings or experienced programmers to test their skills.
No prerequisite knowledge is required to take this course.
What you’ll learn:
- Brief history of the Go programming language
- Everyday tools for developers: terminal, GitHub, IDE
- Structure of a Go program, understanding packages, modules, and dependencies
- Programming basics: variables, control flow statements, data structures, and functions
- Computer science concepts: pointers, memory addresses, standardized formats like JSON
- Achieving concurrency with goroutines and channels
- Good programming practices: error-handling, documenting code, unit testing, and benchmarking.
| Provider | Udemy |
| Instructor | Todd McLeod |
| Level | Beginner |
| Workload | 45 hours total |
| Enrollments | 132K |
| Rating | 4.6 / 5.0 (20K) |
| Exercises | Exercises with solutions |
| Certificate | Paid |
Best Courses Guides Methodology
I built this guide following the now tried-and-tested methodology used in previous Best Courses Guides (you can find them all here). It involves a three-step process:
- Research: I started by leveraging Class Central’s database with 200K online courses and 200K+ reviews. Then, I made a preliminary selection of over 300 Go courses by rating, reviews, and bookmarks.
- Evaluate: I read through reviews on Class Central, Reddit, and course providers to understand what other learners thought about each course and combined it with my own experience as a learner.
- Select: Well-made courses were picked if they presented valuable and engaging content. They also have to fit in a set of criteria: comprehensive curriculum, affordability, release date, ratings and enrollments.
Fabio revised the latest version of this article.
Elham Nazif
