Go (Golang) Interview Questions

Go or Golang is one of the open-source programming languages with which you can develop simple and scalable applications. It is the language one can learn quickly and develop applications. Top companies like Google, Meta, Netflix, Uber, etc., use the Go language for developing their applications.

As Go is increasingly used across big companies, the demand for Go developers in the job market is high. That’s why it is a great choice if you aspire to pursue a Go career. If you are thorough in Go interview questions, you can easily clear Go interviews and land your dream job with attractive packages.

We offer you the top 40 Golang interview questions and answers in this blog to help you ace your Go interviews. We have divided the questions into two sections for freshers and experienced. You can jump into the section directly based on your expertise level.

For ease of learning and understanding, we have divided these questions into 2 categories they are:

• For Freshers
• For Experienced
• FAQs

Top 10 Frequently Asked Go Interview Questions

1. What is Go?
2. State about pointers in Go.
3. Describe methods in Golang.
4. List out the advantages of Golang.
5. What are the decision-making statements of Golang?
6. Explain structures in Golang.
7. Explain the switch statement in Golang.
8. What are rvalue and lvalue in Golang?
9. How can you increase the performance of Golang programs?
10. Does Go have a runtime?

Golang Interview Questions For Freshers

1. What is Go?

Go is also known as GoLang, it is a general-purpose programming language designed at Google and developed by Robert Griesemer, ken Thomson and Rob Pike. It is a statistically typed programming language used for building fast and reliable applications.

Inclined to build a profession as GO Developer? Then here is the blog post on, explore GO Training

2. What are the key features of the Go language?

Go is the short form of Golang. It is an open-source as well as general-purpose programming language. Go is an easy-to-learn language with a built-in concurrency and standard library. It is also a statistically-typed language that helps to build reliable applications. It is the best language that we can use to develop scalable web applications, network services, and command-line tools.

3. What do you mean by dynamic type variable declaration in Golang?

The compiler needs to interpret the variable type in the dynamic variable declaration. It is usually done based on the value passed to the compiler.

4. What are packages in Golang?

Go programs are usually organized into packages. A package is nothing but a collection of source files in the same directory. These files are compiled together. The main thing is that variables, functions, and constants are stored in one source file. The files are visible to other files in the same package.

Go programs start with the main package. We can use the import commands for importing the ‘math/rand’ and ‘fmt’ packages.

5. What do you mean by static type variable declaration in Golang?

This declaration ensures the compiler that there is only one variable with the given type and name. This approach allows the compiler to continue the compilation without needing variable details.

6. What are the two crucial operators used in Golang?

'*' and '&' operators are used in Golang. '*' is the dereferencing operator that we use to declare a pointer. Also, we use this operator to access the value stored at the address. When it comes to the '&' operator, it is known as the address operator, and we use this operator to get the address of a variable.

 

7. What short notes on constants in Go?

 In the Go programming, constants are declared with the const keyword. A constant can be a character, Boolean, string, or numeric value. Numeric constant is the type of constant that is an untyped constant. Besides, it consists of high-precision values.

8. State about pointers in Go.

Pointers represent the addresses of objects stored in the memory. They are typically variables. More to the point, pointers are known as special variables in Golang. Pointers can have different data types like ‘int' and 'string'. Note that the memory addresses typically are stored in pointers in hexadecimal formats.

9. Name the Golang operators.

Jotted down are the different Golang operators.

• Arithmetic operators
• Bitwise operators
• Relational operators
• Logical operators
• Assignment operators
• Miscellaneous operators

10. What are the data types of Golang?

Know that there are four data types in Golang.

• Integer data type – it is used to declare integer numbers
• Float data type – It is used to declare decimal numbers
• String data type – it is a sequence of characters
• Boolean data type – it has either true or false value.

11. What do you understand by Golang variable scope?

Golang variable scope is nothing but a part of the code. This is where you can access and modify specified variables. There are two categories of scope variables: local variables and global variables. Local variables are usually declared inside a function or block of a code, whereas global variables are declared outside of a function or block of a code.    

12. Describe methods in Golang.

A Golang method is a function but has a special receiver argument. Golang methods are typically similar to go functions. Golang methods have receiver arguments. The method can receive the receiver's properties using the receiver argument. Note that the receiver can be either struct type or non-struct type.

13. Is Go language case-sensitive?

Yes. Golang is a case-sensitive language.

14. Mention the three directories of the Golang workspace.

Golang workspace is usually a directory hierarchy of Go programs. A workspace consists of three subdirectories, as mentioned below.

• src – This directory includes the source files as packages.
• pkg – Go package objects are stored in this directory
• Bin – This directory includes the executable programs.

15. List out the advantages of Golang.

Following are the key advantages of Golang.

• Quick and simple coding
• Golang comes with a garbage collector
• Go compilation is quicker
• It provides increased availability and reliability
• It can be employed for large-scale projects
• It works well with multi-core processors
• It provides powerful performance
• The learning curve is low for Golang
• Golang supports concurrency

Related Article: Golang Tutorial for Beginners

16. Why is Golang so popular?

Here are the reasons why Golang is so popular.

• It is an interpreted and statically typed language
• It supports cross-platform application development
• It compiles codes with speed
• Its syntax is compact and simple

17. What is the use of the ‘init’ function Golang?

The ‘init’ function is usually called at the beginning of the execution time. We use the ‘init’ method to add initialization logic into the package.

18. What are the decision-making statements of Golang?

Below are the different decision-making statements of Golang.

• If statement – It is a simple decision-making statement
• If…else statement -  If the given condition is true, it will run a set of codes. Otherwise, it will run another set of codes.
• Nested if statement - It is the statement where an if statement consists of another if statement inside of it.
• If…else…if ladder – This if statement is used when there are many conditions. When no condition is satisfied, then the final ‘else’ statement will be executed.’

19. What is the role of a slice in Golang?

Slice is a lightweight data structure and supports variable length. It is dynamically sized and flexible. A slice formed with two indices and separated by a colon.

Below is the representation of the Golang slice.

a [low: high]

20. What do you understand by the GoROOT variable in Golang?

It is used to find standard libraries. In other words, it is a variable used to locate Go SDK. It is always set to the installation directory. We use this variable to determine the root of a workspace.

21. What are goroutines?

They are lightweight threads widely used in Go concurrent programming. A thread is a function that executes in parallel with the rest of the program. We use the ‘go’ keyword to invoke a function as a go routine.

Golang Interview Questions For Experienced

22. Explain structures in Golang.

Structures in Golang help to combine items of various types into a single type. If you have stored a player's details, you can create two variables with the player's name and age. If you want to store the details of an entire team, you need to create variables for all team members.

type person sruct {
       name string
       age int
       height int
}

23. Why do you use the ‘goto’ statement in Golang?

We use the ‘goto’ statement to assign control to the labeled statement. In other words, this statement makes an unconditional jump from the goto to a labeled statement. It happens in the same function.

The syntax for the goto statement is given as follows:

goto label;
.
.
Label : statement;

24. Why do you use break statements in Golang?

The break statement breaks a loop immediately after it is executed and continues to execute the statement next to the break statement. A break statement is also used to terminate a case in a switch statement.  

The syntax for a break statement in Go is defined as below:

break;

25. What is the channel in Golang?

A channel is nothing but a communication medium with which a goroutine communicates with other goroutines. It is a pipeline through which goroutines can share values. Channels are bidirectional so that you can send and receive values in the same channel. The main thing is that goroutines can send and receive values only when the opposite end is ready.

26. What type of conversion is supported by Golang?

Golang supports implicit as well as explicit type conversion and type assertion. This conversion is also known as automatic type conversion. It occurs automatically when arithmetic operations occur on values with different data types. 

27. Explain the switch statement in Golang.

The switch statement is essentially a multiway branch record. This statement helps to assign the execution to various parts of code based on the use of the expression. There are two types of switch statements: expression switch and type switch.

We apply an expression switch to dispatch execution to different parts of codes based on the phrase's value. We apply a type switch when match types are required.

28. What is the role of select statements in Golang?

In a way, the select statement is similar to the switch statement. The case statement indicates communication in the select statement.

29. Does Golang support inheritance property?

Golang doesn’t support inheritance property. At the same time, it provides embedding, composition, and interfaces to support polymorphism property and allows code reuse.

30. How will you perform testing in Golang?

We use the ‘go test’ command to automate the execution of any form’s function.

31. How do you check the variable type at runtime in Golang?

We can use a type switch to check the variable type at runtime.

32. What is the use of CGo in Golang?

CGo enables Go packages to invite C code.

[ Related Article: Golang vs Java ]

33. How will you compare two structures in Go?

We use the ‘==’ operator to compare two structures. The important thing is that they shouldn’t contain any maps, functions, or slices.

34. Does Go support optional parameters?

Go doesn’t support any optional parameters. Also, it doesn’t support method overloading.

35. Does Golang have exceptions?

No. Golang doesn’t have exceptions. Error values are used to indicate the abnormal states in Golang.

36. Compare buffered and unbuffered channels in Golang. 

Buffered channels make asynchronous communication. Goroutines are not used to send and receive operations.

On the other hand, unbuffered channels support synchronous communication. We can use these channels for sending as well as receiving data.

37. What are rvalue and lvalue in Golang?

rvalue – This value appears on the right side of the assignment operator. It represents a data value stored at some address in memory.

lvalue – It exists on either the right-hand or left-hand side of the assignment operator.

38. What are function closures in Golang?

Anonymous functions are called function closures. We use them in dynamic programming.

39. What do you understand by Rune data type in Go?

A Rune is also called a Codepoint. It is an integer type that alias for the int32 type. The Rune represents a single Unicode character. Rune literals can be represented by enclosing in single quotes.

40. Why don’t maps allow slices as keys?

Map lookup needs an equality operator that slices don’t adopt. Equality is not well-defined on slices.

41. How can you increase the performance of Golang programs?

We can increase the performance of Golang programs

• Managing goroutines using different cores
• Making input/output operations asynchronous
• Using predefined variables and sync pool
• Optimizing maps using integers instead of strings

Golang Frequently Asked Interview Questions:

1. Is this language known as Golang or Go?

Go and Golang are used by IT professionals interchangeably. However, the language is mostly called the Go language.

2. Does Go have a runtime?

Yes! Go comes with an extensive library known as runtime. This library implements stack management, garbage collection, and other key features of the Go language.

3. Can you link the Go and C/C++ codes?

It is possible to link Go and C++ codes. However, linking is inefficient since it affects memory safety and stack management.

4. What is so great about Go?

Go language typically uses simpler and more modern syntax than C++. Go has built-in support for concurrency through goroutines. Besides, Go has a smaller standard library than C++.

5. Is Go an object-oriented language?

Yes and No. Go comes with types and methods which define Go as an object-oriented language. At the same time, other object-oriented languages have no type hierarchy.

Conclusion:

It's time to wrap! We hope the top 40 Go interview questions and answers have benefited you. This blog might have enhanced your expertise in the Go language to the next level. The questions and answers will help you to crack your Go interviews.

If you want to explore more about the Go language, you can sign up for the Go course in MindMajix and gain certification. It will help boost your Go programming knowledge and ace your Go interviews effortlessly. You can use the commands section below for suggestions or to add more questions.