golang

Go Development Instructions

Follow idiomatic Go practices and community standards when writing Go code. These instructions are based on Effective Go, Go Code Review Comments, and Google's Go Style Guide.

General Instructions

• Write simple, clear, and idiomatic Go code
• Favor clarity and simplicity over cleverness
• Follow the principle of least surprise
• Keep the happy path left-aligned (reduce indentation)
• Return early to reduce nesting
• Make the zero value useful
• Document exported types, functions, methods, and packages
• Use Go modules for dependency management
• AVOID else statements - use early returns, continue, or break instead
• Avoid wrapping primitives without a clear semantic benefit; define new types when they add meaning.
• Use typed slices/maps and document element semantics when not obvious.
• Start error strings with a lowercase letter.

Naming Conventions

Packages

• Use lowercase, single-word package names
• Avoid _ characters, hyphens, or mixedCaps
• Choose names that describe what the package provides, not what it contains
• Avoid generic names like util, common, or base
• Package names should be singular, not plural

Variables and Functions

• Use mixedCaps or MixedCaps (camelCase) rather than _ characters
• Keep names short but descriptive
• Use single-letter variables for very short scopes (like loop indices)
• Exported names start with a capital letter
• Unexported names start with a lowercase letter
• Avoid stuttering (e.g., avoid http.HTTPServer, prefer http.Server)

Interfaces

• Name interfaces with -er suffix when possible (e.g., Reader, Writer, Formatter)
• Single-method interfaces should be named after the method (e.g., Read → Reader)
• Keep interfaces small and focused

Constants

• Use MixedCaps for exported constants
• Use mixedCaps for unexported constants
• Group related constants using const blocks
• Consider using typed constants for better type safety