Curriculum roadmap

The suggested pace is twelve weeks, but milestones—not calendar time—determine readiness.

Experienced Go engineers can instead follow the role-based learning paths and complete the new-service tutorial.

Module	Focus	Suggested pace	Completion evidence
0	Toolchain and platform map	2–3 days	Local stack health and a correct request-flow explanation
1	Go fundamentals	2–3 weeks	Small module with tests, interfaces, wrapped errors, and generics
2	Production Go	2 weeks	Context-aware concurrent component with config, logs, tests, and profile
3	Service engineering	3 weeks	Layered HTTP service with SQL, events, security, telemetry, container
4	Data Exchange platform	2 weeks	Source walkthrough and architecture review of one service
5	Capstone and contribution	1–2 weeks	Verified service plus reviewable contribution proposal or PR

Milestone 1 — Go fluency

You can explain value versus pointer receivers, choose slices and maps safely, define consumer-owned interfaces, wrap errors with %w, organize modules, and use a generic type without hiding behavior.

Verification:

go test ./...
go test -race ./...
go vet ./...

Milestone 2 — Production Go

You can propagate context, stop goroutines, inject dependencies without globals, load validated config, emit structured logs, isolate tests, benchmark a claim, and read a profile before optimizing.

Milestone 3 — Service engineering

You can:

• declare typed platform/http routes and handlers;
• model client-safe platform errors and paging;
• use platform/database/sql with transaction context;
• use platform/events and an outbox for atomic publication;
• separate mandatory and degraded dependencies;
• expose health, metrics, and trace-aware logs;
• build a secure, non-root container and render Kubernetes resources.

Milestone 4 — Platform contributor

You can trace a request gateway → authorization → service → store → event consumers, identify data and lifecycle ownership, find the correct dx-common-go seam, distinguish authentication from authorization, and explain current OpenFGA checks versus planned OPA/carried decisions.

Milestone 5 — Ship-ready

Your capstone has:

• domain/application/adapter/composition separation;
• OpenAPI-aligned route declarations;
• unit, integration, contract, race, and security evidence;
• migration and rollback notes;
• deployment values and an operator checklist.
• the completed service review scorecard with no blocker.

Learning discipline

• Type every exercise; do not paste a finished solution.
• Keep a decision log: what you chose, alternatives, and evidence.
• Review race and failure behavior before style.
• Link to reference docs rather than copying their API tables into notes.
• Re-run the module checkpoint after any long break.