Go Time: Golang, Software Engineering
Go Time is a podcast dedicated to the Go programming language and the Go community. Hosted by a rotating panel of experienced Go developers, the show covers a wide range of topics including cloud infrastructure, distributed systems, microservices, Kubernetes, and Docker. Each episode features discussions on best practices, tools, and trends in the Go ecosystem. The podcast aims to provide valuable insights for both new and seasoned Go developers.
Episodes
That's Go Time!
Mat gathers the entire cast (sans Natalie, sadly) alongside our producer, Jerod Santo, for one last Go Time. That's right, this is Go Time's finale episode. After eight years and 340 episodes, we are going out on top. Join us one last time, you won't regret it!
We share our feelings, reminisce on the good times, list some of our favorite moments & share a few opinions, which may (or may not) be
Pitching Go in 2025
With so many great programming languages having emerged in the last decade, many of them purpose-built, when and where does Go still make sense and how do you make the case for it at work?
Unpop roundup! 2023
Go Time producer, Jerod Santo, ranks & reviews the most (un)popular opinions of 2023.
Crawl, walk & run your way to usable CLIs in Go
With the number of libraries available to Go developers these days, you'd think building a CLI app was now a trivial matter. But like many things in software development, it depends. In this episode, we explore the challenges that arose during one team's journey towards a production-ready CLI.
Writing a shell in Go
Writing a shell is rarely the kind of project you take on lightly. In this episode, Johnny is joined by Qi Xiao to explore how to go about such a feat in Go.
AI for Observability
Yasir Ekinci joins Johnny & Mat to talk about how virtually every Observability vendor is rushing to add Generative AI capabilities to their products and what that entails from both a development and usability perspective.
Unpop roundup! 2022
The last time we did a roundup of our unpopular opinion polls, it was November of 2021!
That's too long ago, so today we fix that bug. Join Go Time producer, Jerod Santo, as he ranks & reviews the most (un)popular opinions of 2022.
Russ Cox on passing the torch
In this episode, we will be talking to Russ Cox, who joined the Go team at Google in 2008 and has been the Go project tech lead since 2012, about stepping back & handing over the reins to Austin Clements, who will also join us! We also have Cherry Mui, who is stepping into Austin's previous role as tech lead of the “Go core”.
"Founder Mode" at work when you're not a founder
Tech twitter ("tech X"?) is abuzz with Paul Graham's Founder Mode essay. How does that affect you or come into play when you're not a founder? Does it matter at all to you, your projects & your code?
How I lost my (old) job to AI
In this follow-up to episode #306, "How soon until AI takes my job?", the gang of (grumpy?) veteran software engineers candidly chat about how their day to day is changing in the midst of improving AI tooling & hype.
Home automation with Go
Join Johnny as he dives into the world of home automation with Ricardo Gerardi & Mike Riley, two tinkerers who've taken the plunge with Go. We explore the challenges (and the fun) they encounter along the way. If you're interested in automating your home (or working with micro controllers) come learn how to get started!
The community of gophers
On this episode, Angelica is joined by Go community leaders from around the world: meetup organizers from Guadalajara, St. Louis, New York & Go Bridge Atlanta. Together, they explore the ins & outs of organizing meetups, the benefits of attending, the Go Developer Network (GDN) & the current state of the Go Meetup community.
⚡ Lightning Talk life ⚡
This episode focuses on the art of delivering concise Lightning Talks, a popular format at conferences worldwide where speakers present in a short timeframe. Joined by some of this year's GopherCon Lightning Talkers, we'll discuss their experiences, challenges & tips for effective communication within a limited time.
Big shoes to fill
Kris, Angelica & Johnny react to the recently announced Go team changes, discuss the finding that 80% of developers surveyed by Stack Overflow are unhappy & disagree about the concept of tech debt (but agree that something's gotta give).
OpenAPI & API design
We're talking OpenAPI this week! Kris & Johnny are joined by Jamie Tanna, one of the maintainers of oapi-codegen, to discuss OpenAPI, API design philosophies, versioning, and open source maintenance and sustainability. In addition to the usual laughs and unpopular opinions, this week's episode includes a Changelog++ section that you don't want to miss.
What's new in Go 1.23
We check out the upcoming 1.23 release for new language features and improvements, including iterator functions and supporting packages.
Aha moments reading Go's source: Part 2
Jesús Espino from Mattermost tells Natalie all about (the final four of) his 10 “aha moments” he had reading the Go source code. Don't miss Part 1!
Aha moments reading Go's source: Part 1
Jesús Espino from Mattermost tells Natalie all about (the first six of) his 10 "aha moments" he had reading the Go source code. Part 2 (with the rest of his aha moments) coming soon!
How Mat writes HTTP services in Go
Mat Ryer has been writing HTTP services in Go for more than 13 years. Needless to say, he's learned a lot along the way. Today, Johnny & Ian sit down with Mat to ask him all about it.
Dependencies are dangerous
Dependencies! We need them, but how do we use them effectively and safely? In this week's episode Kris is joined by Ian and Johnny to discuss the polyfill.io supply chain attack, the history of dependency management and usage in Go, and the Go Proverb that "a little copying is better than a little dependency". Of course, we wrap up the episode with some Unpopular Opinions!
Gophers Say! GopherCon EU Berlin 2024
Our award winning worthy survey game show is back, this time Mat Ryer hosts it live on stage at GopherCon EU Berlin 2024! Join in & play along as we see which team can better guess what these GopherCon gophers had to say!
Is Go evolving in the wrong direction?
This week we're catching up on the news! Kris is joined by Ian to discuss some of the recent news from around the Go community. Listen in to hear whether the co-hosts believe there's software that shouldn't be written in Go, their thoughts on if Go is evolving in the right direction & whether common nouns make good package names.
How things get done on the Go Team
Angelica is joined by Cameron Balahan, Sameer Ajmani & Russ Cox from the Go Team at Google to talk about how things get done on the Go Team, how do they decide what to improve and then how do they go about improving it. We also discuss how they decide what to work when & what the future of Go might look like.
Your ultimate guide to mastering Go
Angelica is joined by Samantha Coyle to talk about her newly published textbook: Go Programming - From Beginner to Professional. This book serves as a go-to guide to master Go for real-world software dev success covering fundamentals to advanced topics.
Migrating from PHP to Go
Based on their experience in Curve and Cloudflare, Matthew Boyle & Chris Shepherd share their experience migrating from PHP to Go.
What if Google lays off the Go team?
In this week's episode we're talking about the news! In this laugh-filled episode, Kris is joined by Ian & Johnny to discuss the future of Go, both the Go team itself and iterations of packages within the standard library; Microsoft creating a Go blog & a Go fork; and SQLite and Go.
Go workshops that work
What makes a good, bad, and truly great workshop? How do you put together a Go workshop that works, and how do you get the most out of workshops you attend?
What's new in Go's cryptography libraries: Part 3
The 3 Musketeers return! Filippo Valsorda, Roland Shoemaker & Nicola Murino continue their deep-dive conversation with Natalie about Go's crypto libraries.
Also listen to Part 1 and Part 2!
Local cert management for mere mortals
In this episode, Ben Burkert & Chris Stolt join Johhny to explore the ups & downs of trying to get secure local development environments set up, why it's hard & what you can do about it.
Ship software, not code
Natalie is joined by Carlos Becker (a Brazil-based software developer who maintains GoReleaser and other OSS software) to discuss how `GOOS` and `GOARCH` spark joy.
The magic of a trace
Felix Geisendörfer & Michael Knyszek join Natalie to discuss Go execution traces: why they're awesome, common use cases, how they've gotten better of late & more.
Debugging
In this episode Matt, Bill & Jon discuss various debugging techniques for use in both production and development. Bill explains why he doesn't like his developers to use the debugger and how he prefers to only use techniques available in production. Matt expresses a few counterpoints based on his different experiences, and then the group goes over some techniques for debugging in production.
Questions from a new Go developer
In this episode we answer any/all questions from a new Go developer. Features, best practices, quirks of the language... it's all on the table for discussion.
Jumping into an existing codebase
Jumping into a codebase you're unfamiliar with can be challenging. Are there better & worse ways to go about it? In this episode, Ian gathers a panel (Johnny, Kris & Jon) to discuss the ins & outs of familiarizing yourself with an existing codebase.
How long until I lose my job to AI?
We're all thinking about it and wondering if our job is safe from AI. Maybe. Maybe not. In this episode Johnny Boursiquot is joined some industry veterans who have been through multiple innovation cycles to share their insights and advice on this subject.
Creating art & visualizations with Go
Angelica is joined by the wonderful Anthony Starks to discuss creative coding to create art & visualizations with Go. Anthony is an independent developer/designer interested in data visualization, generative art, building tools & combining art + code.
Foundations of Go performance
In the first of a multi-part series, Ian & Johnny are joined by Miriah Peterson & Bryan Boreham to peel back the first layer of the things that matter when it comes to the performance of your Go programs.
Gophers Say! GopherCon EU Athens 2024
Our award winning worthy survey game show is back, this time Mat Ryer hosts it live on stage at GopherCon EU Athens 2024! Join in & play along as we see which team can better guess what these GopherCon gophers had to say!
What's new in Go 1.22
Our “what’s new in Go” correspondent, Carlana Johnson, joins Johnny & Ian to discuss what’s new with the latest iteration of Go in version 1.22.
Go Capture the Flag! 🚩
Angelica is joined by Neil S Primmer & Benji Vesterby to share their experience organizing "Capture the Flag" at GopherCon 2023. CTF events involve teams vying for supremacy as they strive to gather digital flags (presented as strings) and successfully submit them to the competition organizers. In essence, it's a thrilling "scavenger hunt for nerds." Join us as we unravel the intricacies and excit
300 multiple choices
Over the past 8 years, Go Time has published 300 episodes! In this episode, the panel discusses which ones they loved the most, some current stuff that's in the works, what struggles the podcast has had & what we're planning for the future.
All about Kafka
In this episode Matt joins Kris & Jon to discuss Kafka. During their discussion they cover topics like what problems Kafka helps solve, when a company should start considering Kafka, how throwing tech like Kafka at a problem won't fix everything if there are underlying issues, complexities of using Kafka, managing payload schemas, and more.
What's new in Go's cryptography libraries: Part 2
Filippo Valsorda & Roland Shoemaker from the Go Team return & bring Nicola Murino with them to continue catching us up on what’s new in Go’s crypto libraries.
This is everything we didn’t cover + deep dives from Part 1!
Event-driven systems & architecture
Event-driven systems may not be the go-to solution for everyone because of the challenges they can add. While the system reacting to events published in other parts of the system seem elegant, some of the complexities they bring can be challenging. However, they do offer durability, autonomy & flexibility.
In this episode, we’ll define event-driven architecture, discuss the problems it solves, c
Principles of simplicity
Rob Pike says, "Simplicity is the art of hiding complexity." If that's true, what is simplicity in the context of writing software in Go? Is it even something we should strive for? Can software be too simple? Ian & Kris discuss with return guest sam boyer.
What's new in Go's cryptography libraries: Part 1
Filippo Valsorda & Roland Shoemaker from the Go Team sit down with Natalie to catch us up on what's new in Go's crypto libraries. No, not *that* crypto... good ol' cryptography! Don't miss Part 2!
The se7en deadly sins of Go
John Gregory's GopherCon talk "7 Deadly Gopher Sins" is the ostensible basis of this spooky Go Time episode, but with Mat Ryer at the helm... the only thing to expect is the unexpected. And failed jokes. Expect _lots_ of failed jokes.
Experiences from GopherCon 2023
The 10th GopherCon took place the last week of September and it was a blast. In this episode, we’re talking about our experiences at the conference from several different viewpoints. Angelica as a conference organizer, Johnny as an emcee and workshop instructor, Kaylyn as a speaker, and Kris as a regular attendee.
Zero Trust & Go
Michael Quiqley from NetFoundry joins Natalie to discuss Zero Trust concepts, why they are important for secure systems & how to implement them in Go.
Go templating using Templ
Go's known for it's fantastic standard library, but there are some places where the libraries can be challenging to use. The `html/template` package is one of those places. So what alternatives do we have? On today's episode we're talking about Templ, an HTML templating language for Go that has great developer tooling. Co-hosts Kris Brandow and Jon Calhoun are joined by Adrian Hesketh, the creator
Prototyping with Go
V Körbes returns to talk prototyping with Natalie, Johnny & Kris. Is Go good for prototyping? What makes a language prototypable, anyway? How does space radiation fit in to all this? Tune in and ride along to find out!
What's new in Go 1.21
Our “what’s new in Go” correspondent Carl Johnson joins Johnny & Kris yet again to discuss what’s new with the latest iteration of Go in version 1.21.
A deep dive into Go's stack
A technical dive into how the Go stack works and why we as programmers should care.
Building world-class developer experiences
Today we’re talking with Alice Merrick & Andy Walker about building a world-class developer experience. You know it when you see it, things just feel right. But it’s more than just a pleasant UI or lipstick on a pig (which is a saying), it really matters.
So do we like Generics or not?
So, do we like generics or not? Some people feared they'd be the end of the language. Others were very hopeful, and had clear use cases, and were thrilled about the feature coming to the language. It was also often touted as the reason a lot of people didn't adopt Go. So what do we think now? Mat and Kris are joined by Roger Peppe and Bryan Boreham to discuss the state of Generics in Go.
The tools we love
The Go ecosystem has a hoard of tools and editors for Gophers to choose from and it can be difficult to find ones that are a good fit for each individual. In this episode, we discuss what tools and editors we're using, the ones we wish existed, how we go about finding new ones, and why we sometimes choose to write our own tools.
Gophers Say! GopherCon EU 2023
Our award winning worthy survey game show is back, this time Mat Ryer hosts it live on stage at GopherCon Europe 2023!
Elena Grahovac joins forces with Björn Rabenstein to battle it out with Alice Merrick & Mohammed S. Al Sahaf. Let's see who can better guess what the GopherCon Europe gophers had to say!
The solo gopher
Many Gophers build projects as a team of one. Sometimes these are side projects, other times they are projects used by millions of people but who are still maintained by a single individual. In this episode, the panel discusses techniques for developing and maintaining Go projects as a solo developer.
K8s vs serverless for distributed systems
Listener Joe Davidson recently tweeted: "I’d really be interested in an episode debating Kubernetes vs serverless functions for distributed systems. As someone working a lot with serverless to create large scale systems, for me the complexity in Kubernetes doesn’t seem worth it, especially when onboarding new people. But I’d like to see it from the other perspectives. I could be missing something.
Neurodiverse gophers
Kaylyn Gibilterra returns as Natalie & the gang take our diversity conversation one step further. This time we're talking about neurodiversity as it relates to being a developer, a manager, a conference participant & more.
Wait for it...
Our guests helped create a ML pipeline that enabled image processing and automated image comparisons, enabling healthcare use cases through their series of microservices that automatically detect, manage, and process images received from OEM equipment.
In this episode they will chat through the challenges and how they overcame them, focusing specifically on the wait strategy for their ML Pipelin
Of prompts and engineers
Tips, tricks, best practices and philosophical AI debates abound when OpenAI ambassador Bram Adams joins Natalie, Johnny & Mat to discuss prompt engineering.
The files & folders of Go projects
Return guests Ben Johnson & Chris James join Mat & Kris to talk about the files and folders of your Go projects, big and small. Does the holy grail exist, of the perfect structure to rule them all? Or are we doomed to be figuring this out for the rest of our lives?
How to ace that talk
Now that you've aced that CFP, the gang is back to share our best tips & tricks to help you give your best conference talk ever.
HallwayConf! A new style of conference
Conferences are an integral part of the Go community, but the experience of conferences has remained the same even as the value propositions change. In this episode we discuss what conferences generally provide, how value propositions have changed, and what changes conference organizers could make to realign their conference experience to a new set of value propositions.
Go + Wasm
The DevCycle team joins Jon & Kris for a deep conversation on WebAssembly (Wasm) and Go! After a high-level discussion of what Wasm is all about, we learn how they're using it in production in cool and interesting ways. We finish up with a spicy unpop segment featuring buzzwords like "ChatGPT", "LLM", "NFT" and "AGI"
Diversity at conferences
Go conferences are not as diverse as we'd like them to be. There are initiatives in place to improve this situation. Among other roles, Ronna Steinberg is the Head of Diversity at GopherCon Europe. In this episode we'll learn more about the goal, the process and the problems, and how can each one of us help make this better.
Domain-driven design with Go
Matthew Boyle, the author of Domain-Driven Design with Golang, sits down with Jon & Mat to talk about (you guessed it!) DDD with Go.
The biggest job interview of GPT-4's life
Mat & Johnny interview everyone's favorite LLM (Natalie with a special hat on) to see if it'd make a good hire as a Go dev. Also, Mat tries to turn it into his very own creepy robot by asking personal questions about his co-hosts. Things get weird. In a good way?
Cross-platform graphical user interfaces
We're joined by the creators of Wails and Fyne to dig into writing Go code for different architectures and operating systems.
Hacking with Go: Part 4
Our "Hacking with Go" series continues! This time Natalie & Johnny are joined by Ivan Kwiatkowski & Juan Andrés Guerrero-Saade and the conversation is we're focused around generics and AI.
The bits of Go we avoid (and why)
The panel discuss the parts of Go they never use. Do they avoid them because of pain in the past? Were they overused? Did they always end up getting refactoring out? Is there a preferred alternative?
This will blow your docs off
In a world where most documentation sucks, large language models write better than humans, and people won't be bothered to type full sentences with *actual* punctuation.
Two men... against all odds... join an award-worthy podcast... hosted by a coin-operated, singing code monkey (?)... to convince the developer world they're doing it ALL wrong.
Grab your code-generator and heat up that cold cup
What's new in Go 1.20
Our "what's new in Go" correspondent Carl Johnson joins Mat & Johnny to discuss... what's new in Go 1.20, of course! What'd you expect, an episode about Rust?! That's preposterous...
Is htmx the way to Go?
A quick look at the history of building web apps, followed by a discussion of htmx and how it compares to both modern and traditional ways of building.
How to ace that CFP
It's "Call For Papers" (CFP) season in Go land, so we gathered some seriously experienced conference organizers to help YOUR submission be the best ever.
Long-term code maintenance
Ole Bulbuk & Sandor Szücs join Natalie to discuss the ins & outs of long-term code maintenance. What does it take to maintain a codebase for a decade or more? How do you plan for that? What about inheriting a codebase for the long term? Oh, and (how) can AI help?
Who owns our code? Part 2
Tech lawyer Luis Villa returns to Go Time to school us once again on the intellectual property concerns of software creators in this crazy day we live in. This time around, we're focusing on the implications of Large Language Models, code generation, and crazy stuff like that.
How Go helped save HealthCare.gov ♻️
Paul Smith (from "Obama's Trauma Team") tells us the tale of how Go played a big role in the rescuing and rebuilding of the HealthCare.gov website. Along the way we learn what the original team did wrong, how the rescue team kept it afloat during huge traffic spikes, and what they've done since to rebuild it to serve the people's needs.
A special New Year's fireside chat
Mat and the gang ring in the new year by gathering around a make believe fireplace and discussing what they're excited about in 2023, their new years resolutions & a little bit of Go talk, too. But only a *little*.
