Go may be our generation's most important new programming language. It is exceptionally expressive, highly efficient in both compilation and execution, and enables the development of extremely reliable and robust programs. It shares the same spirit programmers once found in C: it helps serious professional programmers achieve maximum effect with minimum means. Now, Go shares something else with C, too. Brian Kernighan, who wrote the world's most respected and useful C primer for working programmers, has just done the same for Go. Together with Google Go insider Alan Donovan, Kernighan explains what Go does and doesn't borrow from C ... the great ideas it borrows from other modern languages ... and how it avoids features that lead to unnecessary complexity and unreliable code. Throughout, their short, carefully-crafted code examples demonstrate today's most effective Go idioms, so you can start using Go effectively right from the beginning, and quickly take advantage of its full power. All code has been extensively reviewed by Go's creators at Google for both completeness and accuracy.