I put off learning Go for years. "I already know JavaScript, why do I need another language?" Famous last words.

The wake-up call

My Node.js service was eating 2GB of RAM and occasionally crashing under load. A friend rewrote it in Go over a weekend. 50MB of RAM. Never crashed again.

What threw me off at first

• No classes — just structs and functions
• Explicit error handling — no try/catch everywhere
• No generics (well, until recently)
• Pointers — hadn't touched these since college

What clicked

After about two weeks, something shifted:

func processFile(path string) error {
    data, err := os.ReadFile(path)
    if err != nil {
        return fmt.Errorf("reading file: %w", err)
    }
    // do something with data
    return nil
}

This code is honest. It shows you exactly what can go wrong. Coming from JavaScript's callback hell and promise chains, this felt refreshing.

My advice for JS devs

1. Stop comparing — Go isn't trying to be JavaScript
2. Embrace the standard library — it's incredible
3. Start with a CLI tool, not an API

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Six months in, Go is my go-to for anything requiring performance or reliability.