I now find myself 4 months in to the furlough. Bank account drained of any rainy-day funds. Things are beginning to look rather bleak,

But I have continued to use this time pretty much in the same vein as the first 8 weeks but focused mainly on preserving work related skills, and one personal project.

My poor cats have let it be known that they have yet again felt very ignored while I'm working 12+ hours a day on the computer.

So on with the update!

In my current job, we use Go and Elixir for our micro-services. So I thought it best to keep up to speed with them so I am productive on my hopeful return to work. And to be honest of the two I prefer Go hands-down so I have ignored Elixir (as nice as it is...)

Here is my Top 3 list of the many books and tutorials I have worked through. There is an absolute tonne of stuff out there so hopefully this list will be of use to someone that wants to explore Go too.

They are in order of beginner to advanced.

This is a fantastic place to start your journey with Go. Understand the TDD flow properly, while learning the fundamentals of Go! This is extremely well written, and by the end of it you build a small app that cements what you have learnt.

It is available for FREE, and in the format of a Gitbook, and PDF/Mobi from the github repository.

This is a great book, guiding you through the construction of a real-world application built in Go. Armed with your basic understanding of Go, (possibly from the TDD tutorial above) you build a production ready app, learning things such as

• How to structure and organize your code
• Security
• Effectively test a web application

I enjoyed it so much, I went through the book twice. Just because I could 🙃

This is another wonderfully written book, it is not free, but my opinion is it is money well spent. You really cannot go wrong with it.

Woah... what??? Yup, things are about to get heavy 🤘

This book will take you through the very complex world of blockchain, in possibly the most hilarious tech book I've read so far. Lukas Lukac, the author has done a great job of condensing a very complicated topic down to enough to get you up to speed on the topic. It's accompanied with a repo for you to see the evolution of the program as you step through the scenarios that ultimately end up with a fully working blockchain implemented in Go.

This is not a code-along book, like the previous two, although it is littered with code snippets (branches aligned with each chapter) conveying how things are to be implemented. You can run each branch locally and see it in action of course.

I am 'coding along' but maybe I just like RSI in my wrists or something. But it really is extremely interesting and enlightening. Be warned, not for the faint-hearted, this is heavy stuff.

This is a paid-for book, but that gets you in direct contact with the author and the other students on a Discord server which is great if you need anything expanding on.
There is a free introductory 7-chapter sample that you can follow, and then if you wish to continue follow the through to his site to make the purchase.

In-between the coding I really wanted to keep my drawing going, and I thought of giving a purpose to the pictures, so I decided to write a story and draw pictures for it. Simple I thought, a couple of weeks entertainment.

Oh how wrong I was.

This project actually took 3 months to complete, I wasn't anticipating everything involved in writing and illustrating a book.

There is a lot to a book that I just didn't even know about before I started, but I found an amazing resource that gives you a lot of guidance for free, and even (paid for) professional assistance if you wish to take it that far over at Reedsy.com

Any way, after the very steep learning curve I put it all together using Affinity Editor and exported it to Blurb, and hey presto, it's up for sale, and I'm enjoying reading my own copy at home with a cup of tea!

This book will form my physical memory of the lockdown. It has been very therapeutic with the escapism you get from creating your own world and characters that you get to control.

Golang is great from my perspective. Learn the basics in an afternoon, and then crack on. Elixir is nice and all but I think simplicity will always win.

Creating a book is a good experience, and is way more technical than simply putting words to paper. I do think it's something everyone should give a go, even if it's simply putting all of your favorite photos into a small book at the end of the year.. It is nice to hold your book in your hands, and they make great personal presents!

Thanks! (again), Paul C.