Dysfunctional options and stupid programmers • The Applied Go Weekly Newsletter 2024-03-10
Your weekly source of Go news, tips, and projects
Go's intricacies know no bounds - from interface smuggling that augments implementations to the surprising impact of pre-allocating slices. But amid the technical depths, a programmer's musings on embracing simplicity over engineering complexities strike a resonant chord.
Sorry. Really sorry 'bout that. I promise I won't let an AI write the intro to this newsletter again.
Dysfunctional options pattern in Go
If the common Functional Options pattern appears too convoluted, Redovan Donowan presents a simpler alternative. Ensure to also read his earlier article on configuring options in Go.
Dysfunctional options pattern in Go | Redowan's Reflections
The Impact of Pre-allocating Slice Memory on Performance in Golang
Without looking, how large must a slice be for preallocation to become effective? Surprisingly small.
The Impact of Pre-allocating Slice Memory on Performance in Golang | Oilbeater's Study Room
A tale of Interface Smuggling in Go net/http
Interface smuggling, the new "BlackHatDevs" activity in Go? No, interface smuggling is rather a way of augmenting the implementation of an interface with additional interfaces where appropriate. Mahesh Hegde explains the pattern on a real-life example.
A tale of Interface Smuggling in Go net/http
I'm a programmer and I'm stupid
Anton Zhiyanov thinks he is a stupid programmer, although his cool projects like codapi prove him wrong. But if you read between the lines, his insights about producing "stupid" code are actually a manifest against over-engineering. And some of you will have one or more "me too" moments while reading this article. (I had.)
KISS — Keep It Simple, Stupid.
I'm a programmer and I'm stupid
Podcast corner
Cup o' Go
Jonathan and Nehmad tend to release their episodes around the time I finish editing my new newsletter episode. So if you read this, the latest episode was not released before this issue went to press, but you can check the status on the Cup o' Go homepage.
Go Time
Kent Quirk, Sharon DiOrio, Steven Pyle, and Johnny Boursiquot discuss the odds of being replaced by AI.
In the end, only an AI can predict whether that will happen — but after all, who knows it if only hallucinates (once again).
How long until I lose my job to AI? (Go Time #306)
go podcast()
Chris Shepherd, Senior Systems Engineer at Cloudflare, is the guest of this episode, where he and Dominic St-Pierre talk about gRPC and other things.
go podcast() | 030: gRPC in Go with Chris Shepherd
Go tip of the week: Containers from scratch?
The typical Go binary is static and self-contained. It has absolutely no dependencies on system libraries or pre-installed runtimes.
A Go binary is therefore an ideal basis for creating super-small containers. There is no need to put a complete Linux distribution underneath a Go app. If you take it to the extreme, you can create a Go container FROM scratch.
But is this a good idea?
On a second glance, a container built from the scratch image (literally a zero-size, zero-content "image") has a number of deficiencies.
- No user management. A Go binary in a
scratchcontainer lives in a user-free world. Callingos/user.Current()panics in ascratchcontainer. - Missing system folders. An app might assume to find usual paths in their usual places; for example,
/tmpor$HOME. Ascratchimage does not set up any paths or directories. - No auxiliary apps. A Go app may want to run auxiliary tools via
os.Exec()that are missing from ascratchimage. - No CA certificates. If you are serious about running a web server, you need TLS certificates. Certificates are signed by a chain of issuer certificates, up to root certificates from a certificate authority (CA). None of these exist in a
scratchimage.
This list is not exhaustive; there may be more obstacles depending on the app's needs.
So while Go binaries work well on scratch images in theory, the lack of basic features can be prohibitive.
Options to resolve this:
1. Work around the limits
Most of the limitations can be worked around; for example, by adding CA certificates or required directories and files to the image.
2. Use a "distroless" image
Distroless is a set of container images that are trimmed down to the barest minimum possible. The smallest version, the static image, is about 2MB in size and is made for statically linked binaries like Go binaries. The base image adds commonly used shared libaries like libc or openssl.
3. Use small images like Alpine
Alpine is a Linux distribution with a small footprint (about 8MB as a container image) that ships most of the things you would expect from a Linux distro: file system, user management, system libraries, packet management, and more.
Bottom line: Unless the space requirements are super strict, even a Go binary benefits from container images that are more than just the scratch image.
Quote of the week: Every single codebase looks like the last one
As you use Go more and more, you will start to perhaps pine for features other languages have. I wish Go had x, I wish Go had y. But eventually, you will realise you love Go, precisely because it does not have those features.
If you’ve ever worked in a large JS project, a language with every feature imaginable, everyone will use different sets of features, no two areas of the codebase will look the same. When you go from job, to job, to job, that all use Go, and every single codebase more or less looks like the last one.
Ewan Valentine | Advice for new Go Programmers
More articles, videos, talks
Composable HTTP Handlers using generics in Go/Golang
...and you can play around, too, as the article contains runnable examples. – By Willem Schots
Ewan Valentine | Advice for new Go Programmers
If you are a seasoned Gopher already, you might still want to read that article as a refresher. Do you agree with the points made there?
When Kubernetes and Go don't work well together
TL;DR: Kubernetes sets memory limits that Go does not neccessarily acknowledges. – By Emin Laletovic.
The Impact of Preallocating Slice Memory in Golang (Continued) | Oilbeater's Study Room
Ooo, there is a second part!
Expressing creativity through code
Do you have difficulties wrapping your brains around contexts? A mental model may help. Victor Conner shares his mental model with the world, to ease the brain-wrapping.
fzf, Cheat,yeetgif,gorched,Nap,NTrace-Core, | Level Up Coding
Which of these do you know already?
Projects
Libraries
GitHub - barkimedes/go-deepcopy: A Golang package for doing a deep copy for (just about) anything
The first
cutcopy is the deepest.
The combination of Go, Templ, and HTMX (a.k.a GoTH) appears to become more and more popular. Here is a starter template that also includes Gin and Tailwind CSS.
GitHub - orsinium-labs/tinytest: ✅ The only assertion library that works with TinyGo
If you write code for TinyGo and stdlib isn't your cup of tea for writing test assertions, you may have found out that most assertion libraries use reflection and thus aren't a good fit for TinyGo. This one reflects nothing.
Your next restautant table booking app will be a breeze to write with
daterange, a package that does tedious and error-prone date range calculations for you.
UUIDv7 includes a time-ordered value field. The IETF says, "Implementations SHOULD utilize UUID version 7 over UUID version 1 and 6 if possible."
GitHub - yassinebenaid/godump: Go library to dump variables and data structures.
If you like
davecgh/go-spew, you will love this one.
Who says databases aren't good for building message queues!
Tools and applications
GitHub - thewh1teagle/Lens: Your lens to insights.
Lilke a pocket Grafana, for visualizing data from (currently) two data source types, SQLite and URLs.
GitHub - PeronGH/cli2ssh: Turn any CLI program into a SSH server
Serve CLI and TUI apps to remote machines.
How about exploring a different programming pagadigm? Nevalang is a flow-based language that compiles to Go.
GitHub - spcbfr/ascii-go: A script that converts images to ascii art
If you want to print your images using a 1980s' line printer, look no further.
API-only means Bring Your Own UI.
GitHub - rednafi/fork-sweeper: Remove unused GitHub forks
Do you have too many old repo forks around? Sweep them away with `fork-sweeper´.
GitHub - chamanbravo/upstat: a simple open-source, self-hosted status monitoring tool
Monitor HTTP server uptime and latency
(Not) only for English Premier League fans.
A Go-powered Asteroid-like browser game!
Completely unrelated to Go
Are you doing Agile right? ARE YOU?
Slow stable releases or fast unstable releases? - Jonathan Hall
Happy coding! ʕ◔ϖ◔ʔ
Questions or feedback? Drop me a line. I'd love to hear from you.
Best from Munich, Christoph
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