Suggestions for Go OOBE

[Dan C]

Hi Folks,

I have a huge amount of respect for the Go team. Please allow me to make this minor contribution. If this is the incorrect list, please direct me.

My work recently landed on making some educational materials for Go. I ended up creating some scripts to speed up my work. In the process, I noticed some opportunities to improve the OOBE for Go. I recalled that Rust had a pretty slick OOBE and studied it a bit.

1. Rust immediately prompts users to try the language. Unfortunately it stops short of literally inlining a way to do that. More clicks the better, eh? I thought Go could embed a version of https://go.dev/play right on the homepage.

2. It provides a quick way to perform a shell installation. I have mixed feelings about this technique in general. It's convenient, but risky. I like to see what I'm going to run personally. Additionally, the script doesn't bother with file checksums unless I missed something. If Go were to add a similar script, I think it could be made safer.

3. Skip the part about frequent updates :)

4. I love the idea of dropping folks in "Tour" right after. The team which created https://golang-doc-6yhxy5np6a-uc.a.run.app - ref: https://github.com/golang/go/issues/63327 is going in the right direction. I wonder if that could also be inlined for at least the first chapter?

5. The Go top nav could have a download link. Currently users must visit the bottom of the page for most of the site.

Thanks,

Dan