How Learning Go Structs Finally Made Me Love Coding

"I still remember the early days when I was wrestling with code.

The basic stuff? I was getting there. But then came structs, and everything felt like a blur. I kept breaking things, and my code was a mess. What was I doing wrong?
It wasn’t until I sat down, learned the basics of Go structs, and started using them effectively that things finally clicked. That was the turning point. Suddenly, the code became more organized, efficient, and clean. It transformed how I approached programming, and I started to enjoy coding like never before."
If you're in the same boat—wondering why structs are so powerful—this post is for you. Let me take you through a journey to demystify structs and show you how they can change your coding game!

What is a Struct?
In Go, a struct is like a blueprint that allows you to bundle together data of different types. Think of it as a custom data structure for modeling complex entities like Person, Car, or Book.
For example, a Person struct can hold fields like a person’s name, age, and gender—perfect for grouping related information.
Why Use Structs?
Structs help you organize and bundle related data together, making it easier to manage complex data models. Whether you’re building an app that tracks users, products, or inventory, structs allow you to group different types of data, just like how an address contains a street, city, and zip code.
Declaring a Struct: The Basics
The syntax is super simple. You define a struct with the keyword type, followed by the struct name, and then the fields inside curly braces:

type Person struct {
    Name   string
    Age    int
    Gender string
}

Now you have a Person struct that contains three fields: Name (string), Age (int), and Gender (string).

Accessing and Modifying Struct Fields

To access the fields of a struct, you simply use the dot (.) operator:

fmt.Println("Name:", person.Name)
fmt.Println("Age:", person.Age)
fmt.Println("Gender:", person.Gender)

Changing a field? Easy! You can modify the values just as you would with any other variable:

person.Age = 26
fmt.Println("Updated Age:", person.Age)

Why don't coders trust structs?
Because they don't want to deal with their "fields"

Struct Methods: Adding Behavior

Here’s where things get even more interesting. You can attach methods to structs to give them behavior. It’s like giving a struct the ability to do things!

Let’s define a Greet method for the Person struct:

func (p Person) Greet() string {
    return "Hello, my name is " + p.Name
}

Now you can make the person greet you:

fmt.Println(person.Greet())

Structs with Nested Structs: Making Things Complex, Yet Simple

Go structs can hold other structs inside them, which is useful when you want to model more complex data. Imagine a Student struct that includes an Address struct for a complete profile:

type Address struct {
    City  string
    State string
}

type Student struct {
    Name    string
    Age     int
    Address Address
}

Now you can create a Student and access nested fields like this:

student := Student{
    Name: "Fred Gitonga",
    Age:  21,
    Address: Address{
        City:  "Kisumu",
        State: "Mamboleo",
    },
}

fmt.Println(student.Name, "lives in", student.Address.City)

"Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute." — Harold Abelson

Common Mistakes with Structs

Before you run wild with structs, beware of these common pitfalls:

1. Uninitialized Fields: Go automatically assigns default zero values (like 0 for ints or "" for strings) to fields if you don’t initialize them.
2. Using Pointers When Not Needed: For small structs, it’s often more efficient to pass them by value rather than by reference.

Practice Makes Perfect!

1. Easy: Create a Book struct with fields Title, Author, and Pages. Write a method to display the book’s information.
2. Intermediate: Create a Library struct that holds multiple Book structs. Write methods to add a book and list all books in the library.
3. Advanced: Build a Vehicle struct and manage a fleet of vehicles using a Fleet struct, complete with adding, removing, and searching vehicles by year.

Conclusion: Key Takeaways

1. Structs are essential for grouping related data in Go.
2. You can enhance structs with methods and even nested structs.
3. Use pointers when you need to modify the original struct inside a function.

If Go structs can make coding easier for me, they’ll definitely do the same for you. Happy coding!