Welcome to Command Line Applications in Go. My name's Elliott, I'm also known as Dreams of Code, which is the YouTube channel that I run, and I'm thrilled to have you here. In this course, we're going to be doing a deep dive into both learning the Go programming language and building full projects with it, specifically focused around CLI applications, and we're going to build a few of them.

The first application that we're going to build in this course is going to be a simple tool to count the number of words inside of a file, which will introduce us to the Go programming language, as well as building foundational knowledge on how to actually build a command line application from start to finish. And we'll be adding in all of the bells and whistles to it, covering topics such as the standard file streams, command line arguments, CLI flags, and working with files. Lots and lots of files. To achieve this, we're going to be using many of the packages provided by Go's fantastic standard library. Midway through the course, we'll then start looking at some more advanced topics in Go, such as concurrency, end-to-end testing, networking, and some of the advanced ways you can actually work with files on your file system.

Additionally, at the end of the course, we're also going to take a look at some AI tooling, and how we can build our own CLI applications that make use of AI, which I believe is the future when it comes to being a great engineer. As for the course itself, it's composed of high-quality video tutorials, where I explain each lesson's topic in detail, whilst also coding in real time. Additionally, many of the lessons will also have my own code shared, which you can download and study yourself. In addition to video tutorials and code snippets, nearly every lesson has an interactive quiz that you can take as well, which can help to cement your own understanding of the topics we cover inside of the lessons.

If you do get stuck, and happen to find a topic a little confusing, you can also reach out to me on Discord, as everyone who purchases the course will be invited into a private Discord channel, where I and other course takers can help to explain any topic in more detail. Additionally, if any of the video lessons aren't up to scratch, then also let me know, and I'll take a look at redoing it in order to cover any topics that I didn't cover correctly. Again, this course is for you, and I will do everything I can to make sure that you learn successfully. Each lesson in the course actually builds on top of the last, so don't worry too much if some of the concepts seem challenging at first. I'll be here throughout the course every step of the way to guide you, and by the end of it, you'll not only have learned how to build command line applications using Go, but you'll also be using them to solve your own problems.

For example, through the course we're going to be building simple CLI tools to scan for open ports on our system, perform DNS lookups, send HTTP requests, and also we'll be creating an application binary builder, which we can use to build executables of our own projects for every operating system and platform that the Go programming language supports, such as Windows, Linux, and macOS.

In addition to this, we're also going to be pushing the limits of what we can do when it comes to command line interfaces, by building out a full content management system, using some fantastic third party packages when it comes to Go. This system will make use of terminal user interfaces, adding in our own loading spinners and progress bars, and also looking at how we can edit content by opening up a text editor from within our application. In fact, this is actually how I built the content management side of my own course platform, which you should be watching this video on.

In this system, I use the fantastic tooling that we'll take a look at in order to create courses, manage lessons, and upload videos - all through the CLI. Personally, I think this is a much better approach to, say, building an admin web user interface, as the CLI allows you to do a lot more powerful things when it comes to your own computer.

Once we've taken a look at how to build the CMS system, in the final module of this course we'll apply everything that we've learnt through it, by building out an AI tool that we'll use to improve our own developer workflow - which, as I mentioned earlier, I think is honestly the future of what being a great engineer will look like. making use of AI to improve our workflows, rather than just using it to generate code.

In our case, the CLI tool that we're going to build is going to help us write concise and clear git commit messages based off of the changes we've made to our codebase, which will not only make our lives as developers easier, but will also make you look like you have the best commit messages to any of your colleagues. In addition to this, however, the application will start as a foundation for us to be able to create our own AI tools in the future. So, without further ado, let's jump straight in and begin the journey to creating powerful command line applications using Go.