Name: Go routines and channels
Uploaded: 2025-12-03T17:10:44Z
Duration: 6 min 10 s
Description: Go routines and channels: Learn practical fullstack Golang concepts and implementation techniques for real projects, with examples and takeaways.

i want to briefly introduce you to the concept of go routines and channels we're not going to

be using these at least directly in the course but they are important to know about and understand

so the way you can think of go routines is that they are goes way of running multiple

functions at the same time while this is not technically correct currency or concurrency

is making progress on multiple functions at the same time but not necessarily in parallel

this really depends on the environment you operate in do you have a single call

versus multi-core cpu but it's a good mental model to start with so now

i just want you to think of go routines as running multiple functions at the same time

let's take a look at a quick example say we have a function here called say hello and it

simply just prints out a message hello from go routine and then down here in our main

function we can we can call or we can turn this function into a go routine by adding the go

keyword and say go say hello and beneath it let's just print out something like println

main function

done go now if you were to go and run go run main.go you might see hello from go routine or

you might not it really depends on whether the main program finishes before the go routine

if the go routine finishes before the main program it will succeed and print out the message but

if the main program finishes before the go routine the go routine

will get killed and we don't see any output so what we need here is a way for our go routine

or go routines in plural to communicate with the main program and this is where channels comes in so

above our go say hello call here we can make a channel let's just call it ch for

channel short for channel and then we make a channel by saying make chan string you can use

other data types but here we're just going to create a channel that carries strings then down

here in our go routine we can say go func and then in here we call the say hello function and finally

we're gonna write some data to this to this channel and right now we're just gonna write

an empty string finally we can down here say again

arrow and then ch which just means reading from the from the channel so what have you done here well

we have created a channel that holds things and then in our go routine we send data to that

channel using this arrow notation where the direction of the arrow determines the flow

of information so in our go routine we we send data and then later on we receive data from that

channel and when receiving data from the channel we send data to the channel and then later on we receive data from that channel

and when receiving data from a channel the program or the main program will stop and wait until the

data is available which is also known as blocking this is especially useful if we have something like

let's say a worker process that takes some data does something with it and then returns it again

being able to spin up multiple workers that can independently work on a piece of data is very

beneficial when we have large amount of data that we can split into chunks so let me just show an

example here so create a new function called funk worker that has an id and then it accepts a string

channel inside we will just have a result that is literally just going to be a string this is worker

and we're going to just going to use the id

finished d there we go

finished d there we go and then we write that result to the

and then we write that result to the

and then we write that result to the channel

channel

channel all right so

all right so

all right so before

before

before here we just had one

here we just had one

here we just had one one go routine but we can spin up as

one go routine but we can spin up as

one go routine but we can spin up as many as we like so

many as we like so

many as we like so instead of doing it directly like this we

instead of doing it directly like this we

instead of doing it directly like this we can use a loop and say

can use a loop and say

can use a loop and say if for i equals one

if for i equals one

if for i equals one run the loop and then down here we

run the loop and then down here we

run the loop and then down here we simply go

simply go

simply go run worker as the index

run worker as the index

run worker as the index and then the channel

right then we can also collect the

right then we can also collect the result from these three workers

result from these three workers

result from these three workers um where we're going to be saying for

um where we're going to be saying for

um where we're going to be saying for i equals

i equals

i equals one again i less than three

one again i less than three

one again i less than three i plus plus we increase it and

i plus plus we increase it and

i plus plus we increase it and then we just grab the result from this

then we just grab the result from this

then we just grab the result from this channel using this arrow notation and

channel using this arrow notation and

channel using this arrow notation and then we can print it

then we can print it

then we can print it out

out

out result

result

result there we go so here we spin up

there we go so here we spin up

there we go so here we spin up multiple workers

multiple workers

multiple workers we print out the result we would in a real

we print out the result we would in a real

we print out the result we would in a real scenario do something with the data

scenario do something with the data

scenario do something with the data right before we return it but this is a

right before we return it but this is a

right before we return it but this is a very simple illustration of how you can

very simple illustration of how you can

very simple illustration of how you can spin up multiple workers and then

spin up multiple workers and then

spin up multiple workers and then sync them and then do something with

sync them and then do something with

sync them and then do something with the result as it comes in

the result as it comes in

the result as it comes in for most tasks that you're going to be

for most tasks that you're going to be

for most tasks that you're going to be doing in web development you wouldn't

doing in web development you wouldn't

doing in web development you wouldn't need to reach for go routines

need to reach for go routines

need to reach for go routines some of the packages that we will be

some of the packages that we will be

some of the packages that we will be using already has go routines under the

using already has go routines under the

using already has go routines under the hood for example our router will use

hood for example our router will use

hood for example our router will use them to concurrently handle incoming

them to concurrently handle incoming

them to concurrently handle incoming requests

requests

requests but

but

but generally you need a large amount of

generally you need a large amount of

generally you need a large amount of data before go routines really become

data before go routines really become

data before go routines really become beneficial