Go is a programming language built at Google for writing fast, reliable software that is simple to read and simple to ship. Three facts define it. It is compiled, so your source turns into a native executable. It is statically typed, so the types of your values are fixed and checked before the program runs. And it comes with a large standard library and a built-in toolchain, so you can go from source code to a running program with one command and no external build system.
That last point is worth sitting with. In many languages you assemble a
compiler, a package manager, a test runner, and a formatter from separate
projects. Go ships all of that in the box, behind a single go command.
The rest of this topic unpacks what "compiled" really buys you, why so much infrastructure software is written in Go, and how to confirm the toolchain on this machine works.