Editor

The second tool you will need is a good text editor or Integrated Development Environment (IDE). If you are not familiar with IDEs, they are basically text editors that are custom-built for writing applications for specific programming languages. One well-known IDE for Go is GoLand by JetBrains. This comes with built-in support for syntax highlighting, run and debug modes, built-in version control, and package management.

The following is a screenshot of the GoLand IDE displaying the standard Hello World program:

If you prefer to use a text editor, there are many available and they often have plugins for Go that make developing easier. Two of the best text editors available today are Visual Studio Code by Microsoft and Atom by GitHub. Both of these are general purpose editors that also have plugins for syntax highlighting, building, and running Go code. This way you can add what you need without too much overhead.

This screenshot is the same Hello World program, displayed in Visual Studio Code:

Finally, the Atom Version of the Hello World program looks like the following screenshot:

Both the Visual Studio Code and Atom are excellent choices for building Go applications due to the level of community support for the plugins, which I highly recommend installing. Alternatively, you can write Go programs in any text editor and run the code using your terminal or Command Prompt with the standard Go commands.