+ The 2024 GopherCon Europe took place in Berlin. Four of us had the opportunity to take part in the event in-person while +others could attend the talks virtually.
+ +Talks
+ +The Business of Go - Cameron Balahan Go Product Manager
+ +Cameron Balahan, a Product Manager at the Golang Team, kicked off GopherCon 2024 with a compelling talk on the business +side of Go. He shared insights into the strategic decisions that shape the development of the Go language, emphasizing +the importance of balancing innovation with stability to meet the needs of both enterprise users and the broader +developer community.
+ +
+
Memory Optimization - Diana Shevchenko
+ +Diana Shevchenko from Datadog delivered an enlightening session on memory management in Go, particularly focusing on how
+data on the heap is stored in chunks known as mspans. She highlighted the benefits of this approach, such as efficient
+memory access and CPU cache optimization, while also discussing potential pitfalls like logical grouping and code
+readability challenges.
Key Takeaways:
+-
+
- Benefits: Efficient memory access, CPU cache optimization. +
- Challenges: Logical grouping, code readability, versioning, and backward compatibility. +
Domain Driven Design - Robert Laszcak
+ +Robert, a principal engineer, shared valuable insights on simplifying Go projects using Domain-Driven Design (DDD). He +highlighted a recurring challenge: project complexity. Both accidental complexity, stemming from over-engineering, and +essential complexity, inherent in each feature, were identified as major hurdles. Ignoring essential complexity often +leads to increased accidental complexity, making projects cumbersome and prone to becoming legacy systems quickly.
+ +
To illustrate the problem, the engineer introduced a fictional company, Bing Mate, which developed an API for issuing +invoices and processing payments. Initially, the company delivered new features weekly. However, a year later, despite +maintaining a healthy codebase, they struggled to implement similar features promptly, triggering concerns about their +productivity.
+ +The Initial Solution: Microservices and Kubernetes
+ +Bing Mate attempted to solve their issue by hiring more developers and transitioning from a monolithic application to a +microservices architecture on Kubernetes. Despite achieving the ideal Kubernetes setup, they still faced slow software +delivery. This led to a realization that the complexity of their microservices architecture might be the root cause.
+ +In this Fake company, Emily conducted an investigation. She discovered that Bing Mate had split their monolithic +application by database tables, resulting in closely related services that increased complexity. The solution proposed +was to merge these related services into a more cohesive microservice, or a “micro-monolith”, reducing the need for +extensive inter-service communication. To manage the complexity of this new service, Domain-Driven Design (DDD) was +introduced.
+ +Key DDD Patterns To Take Home
+ +-
+
-
+
Always Keep Valid State in Memory: +The first pattern emphasizes maintaining valid state within the application. By encapsulating the state and ensuring +that only valid data can be instantiated, the integrity of the application is preserved. This is achieved by using +private properties and constructors that enforce validation rules, ensuring that no invalid state can exist in memory.
+
+ -
+
Keep Domain Database-Agnostic: +The second pattern involves separating domain logic from database logic. By using the repository pattern, interactions +with the database are abstracted, allowing the domain logic to remain clean and focused on business rules. This +separation not only makes the code more maintainable but also facilitates testing and potential database changes in the +future.
+
+ -
+
Reflect Business Logic in Code: +The third pattern advocates for aligning code with business terminology. By using the same language and terms that +business stakeholders use, the code becomes more readable and understandable for non-technical team members. This +alignment enhances communication and ensures that the software accurately represents business requirements.
+
+
Conclusion
+ +While these patterns provide a solid starting point, they represent just a fraction of what DDD offers. Domain-Driven +Design encompasses a wide array of techniques that address various aspects of software development, from architecture to +requirement gathering. By integrating these patterns into their projects, developers can create more maintainable and +scalable systems, ultimately leading to more efficient software delivery.
+ +
The engineer concluded the talk by emphasizing the importance of understanding and utilizing DDD, especially in complex +projects. They also provided materials and resources for further learning, encouraging developers to explore and +implement DDD in their own projects.
+ +DB Connection Pool - Agniva De Sarker
+ +Agniva De Sarker of Mattermost delivered a detailed presentation on the intricacies of database connection pooling in Go.
+ +He emphasized the importance of using an efficient database schema for logical database operations and discussed the +limitations of pgbouncer. Agniva highlighted that the ideal solution is a single pool serving multiple requests, +although Mattermost itself is not designed to be multi-tenant.
+ +Highlights
+ +-
+
- Key Concepts: Efficient database schema, pgbouncer. +
- Project: Mattermost’s Perseus project was discontinued due to security concerns. +
- Resource: Mattermost Perseus Project +
Agniva’s insights into database connection pooling underscored the importance of an efficiently designed database +schema, which defines how data is logically organized within a relational database. This includes logical constraints +such as table names, fields, data types, and the relationships between these entities, all crucial for optimal +performance and scalability in Go applications.
+ +
+
+
AI Application in Go - Travis Cline
+ +Travis Cline introduced LangChainGo, a library designed to integrate Go with the generative AI ecosystem. This library
+simplifies writing LLM-based programs in Go, supporting various models like ChatGPT. Travis outlined current
+capabilities and future plans for LangChainGo, including core simplification, advanced agent support, and deeper
+integration with tools like LangSmith.
Capabilities
+ +-
+
- Structured Output +
- Tool Calling +
- Vector Database (Sequoia) +
Future Plans
+ +-
+
- Core Simplification +
- Documentation +
- Advanced Agent Support +
- Deeper Integration +
+
+
Concurrent Go - Raghav Roy
+ +Raghav Roy introduced the TLA+ specification language, a formal method for verifying distributed and concurrent systems.
He demonstrated how TLA+ can be used to model and verify concurrent Go programs, ensuring that they are free from unexpected behaviors.
+ +
Technical Docs - Hila Fish
+ +Hila Fish provided a comprehensive guide on creating effective technical documentation. She stressed the importance of +various document types, including system design briefs, on-call runbooks, and project planning documents. Hila also +discussed the benefits of thorough documentation, such as reducing work volume and enabling self-service, thereby +increasing developer velocity.
+ +Documentation Types
+ +-
+
- System Logical Design/Brief +
- On-Call Runbooks +
- Code README +
- Onboarding Docs +
- Project Planning Docs +
- Docs as Code +
- Slack Pinned Messages +
- Slack bot +
General Guidelines
+ +-
+
- Know Your Audience: Tailor documentation for internal maintainers or external users. Make sure people understand it +
- Decide/Abide by Documentation Type: Use markdown for docs as code, integrate diagrams, and ensure CI/CD validations. +
Her tips aim to have a well-documented code and not a self-documented one. She recommends that we should not feel forced +to write everything but at least documente whatever we can and keep it simple.
+ +Below are some of the suggested links shared to help us:
+-
+
- Go Official Style Guide +
- Google Style Guide +
- Technical Writing Tips by Hila Fish +
Frames & Pointers - Felix Geisendörfer
+ +Felix Geisendörfer’s session focused on performance profiling and tracing tools in Go, including pprof, frame pointers, +and various tracing utilities like Gotraceui and Traceutils. He demonstrated how these tools can help developers +understand and optimize their Go applications.
+ +Tools Highlighted
+ +-
+
- pprof +
- Frame Pointers +
- Gotraceui +
- Traceutils +
+
+
Securing Containers - Zvonimir Pavlinovic
+ +Zvonimir Pavlinovic discussed container security, introducing govulncheck, a vulnerability scanning tool developed by
+the Go team. He presented data on vulnerability findings in containers and discussed the capabilities of Scalibr, a
+software composition analysis library that works across different types of binaries.
Key Points
+ +-
+
- Tool: govulncheck +
- Vulnerability Findings: Detected symbols in 54% of containers, mostly Go vulnerabilities. +
- Library: Scalibr, supports various binary types. +
Resources
+ +-
+
- govulncheck +
- Scalibr +
Anti Patterns - Rabieh Fashwall
+ +Rabieh proposes some good practices:
+ +-
+
- when using generics is relevant +
- that can be resumed in “don’t reinvent the wheel” i.e. use native go functions instead of homemade code can have +impact on performances. He shares simple examples and validates them with simple benchmarks. +
+
Conclusion
+ +These two days were a great chance to meet people involved in the language’s development and learn more about a wide +range of topics related to the Go language. Because the event was so well-organized, we were able to exchange in general +benevolence with a large number of GO users.
+ +Our only regret is the somewhat short duration of the talks, which occasionally prevented us from digging deeper into +certain subjects and the lack of a Q&A period with the speakers at the conclusion of their presentation though you can +still ask them questions all along the event.
+ + +
+
+
+
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