Systems & Services Guide

Go for
Python Developers

A direct, no-fluff guide. Assumes fluency in Python, comfort with types, and willingness to trade magic for explicitness. Maps every concept to what you already know.

Compilation
Static Binary
Single file, zero deps
Concurrency
Goroutines
Millions, dirt cheap
GC Pauses
<1ms
Concurrent collector
Generics
1.18+
Type parameters since 2022
Section 01

Why Go from Python

Python optimizes for developer velocity — fast iteration, duck typing, rich ecosystem, REPL-driven exploration. Go optimizes for simplicity at scale — fast compilation, static types, built-in concurrency, and deployments that are a single binary with zero dependencies.

The tradeoff is real: Go is more verbose, has no REPL, no decorators, no metaclasses, no operator overloading, no inheritance. It is deliberately boring. But that boringness is the point — a 500-person engineering team can read, modify, and deploy any Go service in the codebase without deciphering clever abstractions.

If you've ever fought with Python packaging across environments, watched a Flask service collapse under concurrent load because of the GIL, deployed a Docker image with a 1.5GB Python runtime for a 200-line script, or spent an hour tracing a TypeError that a compiler would have caught instantly — Go solves those problems by design.

Key Insight

Go doesn't give you powerful abstractions. It gives you a small, rigid language that compiles fast, runs fast, and is readable by anyone on the team six months later.

Section 02

Mental Model Shift

Python is a dynamically typed, interpreted, GC'd language with deep object-oriented and functional features. Go is a statically typed, compiled, GC'd language that looks procedural, uses composition over inheritance, and treats concurrency as a first-class primitive.

The Five Shifts

1. Types are decided at compile time, not runtime. Python: x = 5; x = "hello" # fine Go: var x int = 5; x = "hello" // compile error 2. No exceptions. Errors are values you must handle. Python: try: f() except Error: ... Go: result, err := f(); if err != nil { ... } 3. No classes. Structs + interfaces + functions. Python: class Dog(Animal): ... Go: type Dog struct{} + func (d Dog) Speak() string 4. No inheritance. Composition and implicit interfaces. Python: class B inherits from A Go: struct B embeds A; B satisfies Interface if it has the methods 5. Concurrency is built in. Goroutines and channels. Python: asyncio.create_task(f()) # or threading, or multiprocessing Go: go f() // that's it
The Hardest Adjustment

It's not the syntax. It's the verbosity. Go forces you to write the if err != nil check. It forces you to write the type. It forces you to handle every case. This feels tedious coming from Python. It's the entire design philosophy — explicit over implicit, always.

Built for Python developers who want to ship Go.