Coding for All
Lesson 1: Hello, World!
Hello, World! Make the computer say hello, every programmer's first program.
1package main
2
3import "fmt"
4
5func main() {
6 fmt.Println("Hello, world!")
7}
Terminal
$ go run main.go
Hello, world!
Every line, explained
package main
Every Go file starts by saying which package it belongs to. package main means "this is a program you can run", and Go will look inside it for func main.
import "fmt"
import brings in a package from Go's standard library. "fmt" (short for format) is the one full of printing tools, like fmt.Println.
func main() {
func main() { ... } is where a Go program starts. When you run the program, Go finds func main inside package main and runs everything between its braces, top to bottom.
fmt.Println("Hello, world!")
fmt.Println(...) prints what is inside the brackets to the terminal, then moves to a new line (Println is short for "print line"). The capital P matters: in Go, the tools a package shares all start with a capital letter. The text goes inside double quotes: in Go, strings ALWAYS use double quotes.
}
This closing brace } ends func main.