Go Concurrency Patterns

Production patterns for Go concurrency including goroutines, channels, synchronization primitives, and context management.

When to Use This Skill

• Building concurrent Go applications
• Implementing worker pools and pipelines
• Managing goroutine lifecycles
• Using channels for communication
• Debugging race conditions
• Implementing graceful shutdown

Core Concepts

1. Go Concurrency Primitives

2. Go Concurrency Mantra

Don't communicate by sharing memory;
share memory by communicating.

Quick Start

package main

import (
    "context"
    "fmt"
    "sync"
    "time"
)

func main() {
    ctx, cancel := context.WithTimeout(context.Background

Detailed patterns and worked examples

Detailed pattern documentation lives in references/details.md. Read that file when the navigation tier above is insufficient.

Best Practices

Do’s

• Use context - For cancellation and deadlines
• Close channels - From sender side only
• Use errgroup - For concurrent operations with errors
• Buffer channels - When you know the count
• Prefer channels - Over mutexes when possible

Don’ts

• Don’t leak goroutines - Always have exit path
• Don’t close from receiver - Causes panic
• Don’t use shared memory - Unless necessary
• Don’t ignore context cancellation - Check ctx.Done()
• Don’t use time.Sleep for sync - Use proper primitives