Why Spend Currency When You Have “Concurrency”
Published: 2022-12-23 15:13:22


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Go, like many other modern programming languages, provides support for creating and working with multiple threads, also known as “goroutines.” These are separate threads of execution within a single process that can run concurrently with each other.
One of the key benefits of using goroutines is that they are very lightweight and efficient, and can make use of multiple CPU cores to improve the performance of concurrent operations.
To create a goroutine, you simply call the go keyword followed by a function call. For example:

`go myFunction()`

This will create a new goroutine that will execute the myFunction function concurrently with the rest of your code.
In order to coordinate and synchronize access to shared resources, Go provides a number of built-in synchronization primitives, such as channels and mutexes.
Channels are a way to communicate and transfer data between goroutines. They provide a way for one goroutine to send data to another goroutine, and for the receiving goroutine to receive and process that data.


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```
// Create a channel for transmitting dat
// between the goroutines.
ch := make(chan int)

// Create a goroutine that sends some data
// to the channel.
go func() {
    ch <- 5
}()

// Create a goroutine that receives the data
// from the channel and processes it.
go func() {
    data := <-ch
    fmt.Println("Received data:", data)
}()
```
In this example, we create a channel using the make function, and then create two goroutines. The first goroutine sends the number 5 to the channel, and the second goroutine receives the data from the channel and prints it.
**Mutexes**, on the other hand, are used to protect shared resources from being accessed by multiple goroutines at the same time. They provide a way to “lock” a resource so that only one goroutine can access it at a time, preventing race conditions and other synchronization issues. Here is an example of using a mutex to protect a shared resource:

```
// Create a mutex to protect the shared resource
var mu sync.Mutex

// Create a goroutine that accesses the shared resource.
go func() {
    // Lock the mutex to ensure exclusive access
    // to the shared resource.
    mu.Lock()

    // Access the shared resource.
    // (In this example, we just print a message,
    // but in a real application, this would be
    // where we access the shared resource.)
    fmt.Println("Accessing shared resource")

    // Unlock the mutex to allow other goroutines
    // to access the shared resource.
    mu.Unlock()
}()
```

In this example, we create a mutex using the _sync.Mutex_ type, and then create a **goroutine** that accesses a shared resource. Before accessing the shared resource, the goroutine locks the mutex using the Lock method. This ensures that no other goroutine can access the shared resource at the same time. After accessing the shared resource, the goroutine unlocks the mutex using the Unlock method, allowing other goroutines to access the shared resource if needed.
Overall, Go’s support for multi-threaded programming makes it a powerful and efficient language for building concurrent systems.