A tech blog with various opinions on IT and tech, but mostly on the topic of the programming language Go.

Go's Inheritance Enigma: Exploring Unconvential Patterns

 Posted on May 10, 2024  |  11 minutes  |  Martin Kock

Preamble So, before we dive in, let’s make sure we’re on the same page. I’m assuming you’ve had some run-ins with Go and interfaces before – they’re kind of a big deal here. Oh, and pointers – they’re like the secret sauce in Go programming, so having a good grasp of those will definitely come in handy. Ready? Let’s crack this inheritance enigma wide open! Introduction Transitioning to Go from more conventionally object-oriented counterparts like Java and C++ can be an eye-opening experience. [Read More]
programming  golang  go  interfaces  composition  inheritance  embedding  exporting  mixin  backref  backreference 

A Guide to Interfaces in Go

 Posted on August 25, 2021  |  30 minutes  |  Martin Kock

In Go, interfaces take the center stage. They are more flexible and more powerful than their counterparts in other languages. When coming to Go from another language, this may not be immediately obvious, yet this realization is quite important for our ability to write well-structured and decoupled code. Let’s explore exactly how flexible they are and how we can make the best use of them. Preamble I’ll assume that you have at least a passing familiarity with the Go programming language and interfaces. [Read More]
programming  golang  go  interfaces  decoupling  composition  visibility  compatibility  conversion  embedding  exporting  applying 

Learn Go by Building a Bus Service

 Posted on August 22, 2021  |  22 minutes  |  Martin Kock

Go is a pragmatic language. It’s about getting stuff done. This allows for a more direct coding style that I personally find to be a relief from the “classic” object-oriented coding styles with their proliferation of class hierarchies. With Go, we can still take advantage of many relevant design patterns without getting distracted by having to write getters, setters, factory classes and complex class hierarchies. Design patterns are fundamentally just recipes - or best practices - for how to approach certain classes of problems. [Read More]
programming  golang  design patterns  getters  setters  pattern  visitor  facade  observer  strategy 

How to Learn a New Programming Language

 Posted on May 3, 2020  |  11 minutes  |  Martin Kock

Want to pick up a new programming language? Great! I personally think that the landscape of programming languages has never been more exciting than it is now - there are a multitude of languages to pick from, and a true professional is polyglot (from Wikipedia: Polyglotism or polyglottism is knowledge of several languages, consisting of the ability to understand, speak, read, or write these languages). I won’t help you pick a language from the pile - that is entirely based on your coding level, language skills, ambitions and the direction that you’d like to take your career in. [Read More]
programming  design patterns  languages  methodology 

The Flyweight Pattern in Go

 Posted on January 13, 2020  |  8 minutes  |  Martin Kock

Definition: In computer programming, flyweight is a software design pattern. A flyweight is an object that minimizes memory usage by sharing as much data as possible with other similar objects; it is a way to use objects in large numbers when a simple repeated representation would use an unacceptable amount of memory. In the following, I’ll demonstrate the Flyweight Pattern with two examples in Go. First, I’ll optimize two memory-based caches that rely on the same underlying data, and then I’ll optimize another cache that contains repetitive data. [Read More]
golang  programming  flyweight  design patterns  performance 

Inheritance Is Indeed Evil

 Posted on December 22, 2019  |  7 minutes  |  Martin Kock

A tale of growing frustration with Object-Oriented Programming that highlights one of its core features as a culprit. It’s easy to become polarized about the two main paradigms that we use to classify new programming languages with. I certainly was, until recently. Do you prefer object-oriented programming, or functional programming? If you are okay with either paradigm, then congratulations — you are not polarized — but if you greatly prefer one over the other, or maybe you even glance condescendingly at fellow developers who don’t share your polarized view of the world, then I hope to change your mind. [Read More]
inheritance  oo  golang  functional  programming 

Reading Humongous Files in Go

 Posted on December 21, 2019  |  8 minutes  |  Martin Kock

A real-world performance comparison between Node.js and Go for file parsing unsurprisingly turns out in Go’s favor — but how much? This blog post was first published on Medium, available via CloudBoost. Part One Being fairly new to Go aka. Golang, I was itching to try it out on a real-world problem after having done numerous tutorials and CodeWars katas (don’t know CodeWars? Try it out, it’s really cool). At my workplace, my boss just so happened to find himself in a situation where he needed to parse a humongous XML file — a perfect opportunity to show off my new Golang skills! [Read More]
golang  performance  xml  csv  programming 

You Probably Dont Want a Web Framework

 Posted on March 22, 2019  |  8 minutes  |  Martin Kock

Ruby on Rails. Django. Spring. Symfony. You probably know some of these frameworks and, like me, you’ve probably worked with one or more of them. Web frameworks have established themselves as an important part of web development where they attempt to provide a one-solution-fits-all that has you covered from A to Z, promising automated scaffolding, easy management of entities and their corresponding database tables, out-of-the-box security and comprehensive documentation to get you started. [Read More]
programming  web  frameworks  rest  composition  decoupling