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Curated Resources – Backend SDE-II (Go)

Goal of this file: List high-signal resources (videos, blogs, repos, books) mapped to the roadmap phases for Go backend development. Use this as a menu, not a checklist to finish entirely.

1. Go Fundamentals​

  • Books / Long-Form

    • The Go Programming Language (Donovan & Kernighan) – comprehensive introduction to Go.
    • Learning Go (Jon Bodner) – modern Go practices and idioms.
    • Effective Go (official) – essential Go style and patterns.

  • Videos / Playlists

    • Go official YouTube channel tutorials.
    • "Concurrency is not Parallelism" by Rob Pike.
    • "Understanding Go's Memory Model" talks.

  • Blogs

    • Official Go blog (blog.golang.org) – language features and best practices.
    • Dave Cheney's blog – Go performance and design.
    • Articles on pointers, interfaces, and composition patterns.

  • Repos / Code

    • Go standard library examples.
    • Minimal Go project templates with modules and testing.

2. Go Backend Engineering​

  • Books

    • Let's Go and Let's Go Further (Alex Edwards) – building production-ready web applications in Go.
    • Go in Action – practical patterns for building scalable systems.

  • Topics to Search / Watch

    • Go runtime scheduler and goroutines internals.
    • Building REST APIs with net/http, Chi, or Gin.
    • Error handling patterns in Go (wrapping, custom errors).
    • Structured logging with slog (Go 1.21+) or zap/zerolog.

  • Blogs

    • Guides on structuring large Go backends (clean architecture, hexagonal).
    • JWT authentication in Go with golang-jwt/jwt.
    • Middleware patterns and request context usage.

  • Structured Courses / Topic Roadmaps

  • Repos

3. Databases – MongoDB, PostgreSQL​

  • Docs / Guides

    • MongoDB Go driver documentation.
    • pgx (PostgreSQL driver) documentation and best practices.
    • sqlx for easier SQL operations.

  • Videos

    • SQL basics and advanced query tuning (language-agnostic).
    • NoSQL vs SQL talks and real-world trade-offs.

  • Blogs

    • Using database/sql effectively in Go.
    • Connection pooling and prepared statements in Go.
    • N+1 query problem explanations and solutions.
    • Designing schemas for common app patterns.

  • Repos

    • GORM – popular Go ORM (use with caution).
    • Ent – entity framework for Go.
    • Examples of repository pattern in Go.

4. Redis, Queues, Caching​

  • Docs

    • Redis official documentation for data structures and persistence.
    • go-redis – Redis client for Go.

  • Blogs

    • Caching patterns: cache-aside, write-through, write-back.
    • Implementing rate limiting with Redis in Go.
    • Using Redis pipelines and transactions in Go.

  • Repos

    • Asynq – simple, reliable task queue for Go (Redis-backed).
    • Examples of worker pools with goroutines and channels.

5. Concurrency & Patterns​

  • Books

    • Concurrency in Go (Katherine Cox-Buday) – goroutines, channels, patterns.

  • Videos / Talks

    • "Go Concurrency Patterns" by Rob Pike.
    • "Advanced Go Concurrency Patterns" talks.
    • Context package deep dives.

  • Blogs

    • Common concurrency patterns (fan-out/fan-in, pipeline, worker pool).
    • Using sync.WaitGroup, sync.Mutex, and sync.RWMutex.
    • Context cancellation and deadline patterns.

  • Practice

    • Implement concurrent log processor, web scraper, or job queue.

6. System Design (HLD + LLD)​

  • Books

    • Designing Data-Intensive Applications – fundamentals of storage, streams, distributed systems (language-agnostic).

  • Videos / Playlists

    • System design interview playlists (search for "system design for backend").
    • Talks on building large-scale systems like notification services, feeds, and rate limiters.

  • Blogs

    • Architectures of large-scale systems (e.g., how big companies design their services).
    • API design best practices (versioning, pagination, error handling).
    • Microservices patterns in Go.

  • Go-Specific

    • How Uber, Dropbox, and other companies use Go at scale.
    • gRPC and Protocol Buffers in Go.

7. Machine Coding & LLD​

  • Resources

    • Collections of LLD / machine coding interview problems.
    • Example implementations in Go for:
      • Parking lot, Splitwise, cache, pub/sub, rate limiter, etc.

  • Practice Strategy

    • Use machine-coding-bank.md as your main list.
    • For any problem, search for one reference solution after you've implemented your own.
    • Focus on Go idioms: interfaces, composition, error handling.

  • Repos

    • Search GitHub for "LLD Go" or "machine coding Go" examples.

8. DSA​

  • Platforms

    • Use one major coding platform for:
      • Arrays, strings, maps, trees, graphs, heaps.
    • Practice in Go to get comfortable with syntax and standard library.

  • Strategy

    • Follow patterns from dsa-backend-plan.md.
    • Bookmark problems where you learn a new pattern.
    • Note: Go doesn't have built-in generics for all data structures (pre-1.18), so practice implementing them.

  • Go-Specific Tips

    • Use container/heap for priority queues.
    • Understand slice internals (length, capacity, backing array).
    • Practice with maps and custom hash functions if needed.

9. Theory, Infra, Cloud, CI/CD​

  • OS & Networking

    • Online course notes or video series on OS fundamentals.
    • Networking primers covering TCP/IP, HTTP, DNS, TLS.

  • DBMS, CAP, Consistency

    • ACID and isolation levels tutorials.
    • CAP and consistency models blog series.

  • Cloud (AWS Preferred)

    • AWS docs and introductory tutorials:
      • EC2, S3, RDS, SQS, CloudWatch, IAM basics.
    • Step-by-step guides to deploy a Go app on AWS.
    • AWS SDK for Go (v2) documentation.

  • CI/CD & DevOps

    • Tutorials on GitHub Actions or GitLab CI pipelines for Go apps.
    • Dockerizing Go applications (multi-stage builds).
    • Cross-compilation in Go for different platforms.

10. Production Debugging, Logs, Profiling​

  • Topics

    • Go logging best practices (slog, zap, zerolog).
    • Using structured logs and correlation IDs.
    • Basics of monitoring (metrics, dashboards, alerts).
    • Profiling CPU and memory usage with pprof.
    • Using go tool trace for concurrency debugging.

  • Blogs

    • Effective use of pprof for performance analysis.
    • Debugging goroutine leaks.
    • Memory profiling and optimization in Go.

  • Tools

    • Delve – Go debugger.
    • pprof – built-in profiling tool.
    • Jaeger – distributed tracing (works well with Go).

  • Practice

    • Add logging and basic metrics to your own projects (see projects.md).
    • Simulate failures and timeouts, then debug them.
    • Profile a CPU-intensive or memory-heavy Go program.

11. Testing in Go​

  • Docs

    • Official testing package documentation.
    • Table-driven tests pattern.

  • Blogs

    • Writing effective unit tests in Go.
    • Mocking and dependency injection patterns.
    • Integration testing strategies.

  • Tools

    • testify – popular testing toolkit (assertions, mocks).
    • gomock – mocking framework.
    • httptest – HTTP testing utilities.

12. Go Community & Staying Updated​

  • Resources

  • Conferences & Talks

    • GopherCon talks (available on YouTube).
    • dotGo conference talks.

Use this file as a pointer to search for the latest, high-quality resources while relying on the rest of the repo (roadmap-16-weeks.md, week-XX.md, etc.) for what to study and in which order.