Data Transformations for APIs via Struct Composition in Golang

I enjoy writing Go. It lacks the magic and obfuscation present in other languages, whilst possessing an intuitive syntax that still allows the concise expression of complex ideas. It’s awesome.

What’s less awesome, unfortunately, is that the flexibility of the language often leads to it’s simplicity being overlooked; and this is no more apparent than in data transformation layers. If you find yourself regularly writing convulated transformers, then there’s a good chance that you’re not actually understanding the language properly.

And what’s the point in writing Go if you’re simply going to write Java/C#/PHP?

Continue reading

Go Generate: Quick, Easy, and oh so Powerful

If you’ve had the misfortune of talking to me about development over the past year, you may well have noticed me evangelising about Go. It’s true: I’ve become guilty of something I previously mocked colleagues for. Perhaps it’s because the book “The Go Programming Language” reminds me of the first ever programming book I picked up - “The C Programming Language” - when I was around 13? Maybe it’s the simplicity and distinct lack of “magic” that the language has? Continue reading

Developing for Linux on the Desktop: dbus

I’ve previously written about how I feel Linux is a great OS for developers: it’s insanely configurable, it’s easy to customise, there are distributions to suit whichever level of stability you require, and the community around it is thriving. But what about developing for Linux, as opposed to on Linux? Although language choice isn’t much of an issue, there’s clearly a lot more than the language that goes in to developing a working application. Continue reading