So, I Wrote a Book: The Story Behind "100 Go Mistakes and How to Avoid Them"

Summary

Hello! Today, I’m going to share the story of the process behind writing my book.This post also marks the launch of Inner Brew, a new section where I will share more personal reflections and stories. If you’re not really into that and prefer only to receive the usual concept-focused posts you can turn off notifications (email or push) for this section here (Notifications → Disable “Inner Brew“).My book, 100 Go Mistakes and How to Avoid Them, was published in August 2022. But the story starts much earlier, back in 2018.At this time, I was working in Switzerland, refactoring a C++ legacy codebase. Together with my colleague and friend Damien Chambon, we started evaluating Scala and Akka (an actor model framework) for a potential rewrite. Why Scala and Akka, you may wonder? Well, back then I had mostly Java/JVM experience, and I was intrigued by the promises of the actor model.But things were… definitely not simple. First off, it was a whole new language to learn. Second, Akka is a beast. It takes time to ramp up, and we even had to hire an external consultant to help with the implementation. After months of work, we finally had our first PoC. And yet, neither my colleague nor I were really convinced.So, we started looking at another language to counterbalance Scala. Maybe this new one wasn’t the sexiest language ever invented, but it looks promising, efficient, and much easier to ramp up with: Go.After just a couple of weeks in Go, we were able to cover the same scope as our Scala/Akka PoC. And for me, that was the beginning of a love story with the Go programming language.A few months passed, and I moved to another company and another country: the UK. I was back working in a Java ecosystem since my Go experience was still too limited to land a proper job. Plus, given the international move, the company itself mattered more to me than the tech stack.That experience turned out to be horrendous. It was full of politics, and I hated every aspect of my job. But in the eve...