Three new books, Go Optimizations 101, Go Details & Tips 101 and Go Generics 101 are published now. It is most cost-effective to buy all of them through this book bundle in the Leanpub book store.

Concurrency Synchronization Overview

This article will explain what are synchronizations and list the synchronization techniques supported by Go.

What Are Concurrency Synchronizations?

Concurrency synchronizations means how to control concurrent computations (a.k.a., goroutines in Go)

to avoid data races between them,
to avoid them consuming CPU resources when they have nothing to do.

What Synchronization Techniques Does Go Support?

The article channels in Go has shown that we can use channels to do synchronizations. Besides using channels, Go also supports several other common synchronization techniques, such as mutex and atomic operations. Please read the following articles to get how to do synchronizations with all kinds of techniques in Go:

We can also do synchronizations by making use of network and file IO. But such techniques are very inefficient within a single program process. Generally, they are used for inter-process and distributed synchronizations. Go 101 will not cover such techniques.

To understand these synchronization techniques better, it is recommended to know the memory order guarantees in Go.

The data synchronization techniques in Go will not prevent programmers from writing improper concurrent code. However these techniques can help programmers write correct concurrent code easily. And the unique channel related features make concurrent programming flexible and enjoyable.

Index↡

The Go 101 project is hosted on Github. Welcome to improve Go 101 articles by submitting corrections for all kinds of mistakes, such as typos, grammar errors, wording inaccuracies, description flaws, code bugs and broken links.

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Tapir, the author of Go 101, has been on writing the Go 101 series books and maintaining the go101.org website since 2016 July. New contents will be continually added to the book and the website from time to time. Tapir is also an indie game developer. You can also support Go 101 by playing Tapir's games (made for both Android and iPhone/iPad):

Color Infection (★★★★★), a physics based original casual puzzle game. 140+ levels.
Rectangle Pushers (★★★★★), an original casual puzzle game. Two modes, 104+ levels.
Let's Play With Particles, a casual action original game. Three mini games are included.

Individual donations via PayPal are also welcome.

Index:

About Go 101 - why this book is written.
Acknowledgments

An Introduction of Go - why Go is worth learning.
The Go Toolchain - how to compile and run Go programs.

Become Familiar With Go Code
- Introduction of Source Code Elements
- Keywords and Identifiers
- Basic Types and Their Value Literals
- Constants and Variables - also introduces untyped values and type deductions.
- Common Operators - also introduces more type deduction rules.
- Function Declarations and Calls
- Code Packages and Package Imports
- Expressions, Statements and Simple Statements
- Basic Control Flows
- Goroutines, Deferred Function Calls and Panic/Recover

Go Type System
- Go Type System Overview - a must read to master Go programming.
- Pointers
- Structs
- Value Parts - to gain a deeper understanding into Go values.
- Arrays, Slices and Maps - first-class citizen container types.
- Strings
- Functions - function types and values, including variadic functions.
- Channels - the Go way to do concurrency synchronizations.
- Methods
- Interfaces - value boxes used to do reflection and polymorphism.
- Type Embedding - type extension in the Go way.
- Type-Unsafe Pointers
- Generics - use and read composite types
- Reflections - the reflect standard package.

Some Special Topics
- Line Break Rules
- More About Deferred Function Calls
- Some Panic/Recover Use Cases
- Explain Panic/Recover Mechanism in Detail - also explains exiting phases of function calls.
- Code Blocks and Identifier Scopes
- Expression Evaluation Orders
- Value Copy Costs in Go
- Bounds Check Elimination

Concurrent Programming
- Concurrency Synchronization Overview
- Channel Use Cases
- How to Gracefully Close Channels
- Other Concurrency Synchronization Techniques - the sync standard package.
- Atomic Operations - the sync/atomic standard package.
- Memory Order Guarantees in Go
- Common Concurrent Programming Mistakes

Memory Related

Some Summaries

More Go Related Topics