I’ve been using Go for a while for work and I had the recent motivation to try and improve my depth of knowledge in the language. I haven’t been much for reading, but I recently have realized the importance of books in my programming journey. Naturally, the first thing I reached for was for a GitHub repo recommending some books for some more formal education in Go.
The first repo that caught my eye was this: https://github.com/dariubs/GoBooks.
20k stars, some mild recommendations on Reddit, seemed like a good place to start. I will not lie to you, I did not go as far in looking for a book. And did not really do my research. I saw “Last Published: 2015” next to “The Go Programming Language” (the book I should’ve probably bought) went down one, saw it was published in 2026 and bought it.
Should that obviously AI-generated gopher have tipped me off? Probably. Nonetheless I threw $25 at the website (Did I mention it was an online-only book with no physical copies or PDF download available?) and started my journey to become a Go master.
First few chapters were boring. Setup, commands, dependencies, basic logic. Book’s not called Interesting Go what else did I expect. I thought the prose was a little bland but I haven’t read enough programming books to really tell. However, I did begin to see some problems.
Random mojibake issues, glossary links not working, exercises that seemed either way too easy or way too hard for the information just introduced. I kind of ignored these as translation issues or just web problems. To be honest I didn’t mind because I was learning. Taking notes and going down rabbitholes made me learn a lot of stuff, and occasionally it would mention a nugget of info I found valuable.
Then, yesterday, as I was going through this book I refreshed the page and got a domain expiry warning.
Me being the good citizen I am, decided to contact the authors to let them know this happened. I found it somewhat odd such a popular book only accessible via website would have a domain name that expired, but nonetheless I tried to find a contact. Well one of the authors had an almost completely empty GitHub, with no contact on LinkedIn.
I was able to find the other author, and shot him a message on LinkedIn about the expired domain. He thanked me and fixed it quickly, but something felt wrong. Why would the author of such a seemingly popular book make such a mistake?
Then I made the realization. Dariush Abbasi, one of the authors of Boring Go, is also the owner of the GoBooks repo. In this commit 2 months ago he adds his own book to the top section of his already popular GoBooks repo.
There’s nothing wrong with writing a book or making a list, but a trusted recommendation list with the owner’s paid product near the top and no indication that it’s his own is not ok. Especially with the numerous inconsistencies with the book, it makes it all seem like a slapped-together cash grab.
I did some more digging online and couldn’t find anywhere where Boring Go is listed that wasn’t self promo by the author. That’s kinda scummy. Not to mention the years of experience with Go in the site’s about page not corroborating with either author’s experience on GitHub/LinkedIn. Or how lowkey AI generated everything looks (no proof, just vibes; except the gopher that’s a sure thing).
But all I really want to do is dissuade anyone thinking of purchasing this book. Don’t be like me. Do your research. And I’ve read enough of it to give an honest review.
This book is incredibly bland with no authorial voice. It is technically correct in the sense that what it states is true. But with no style and nothing more to say, you could learn the same thing from reading the docs.The only real value add is collecting a lot of godoc info in one webpage. And that is not worth $25.
TL;DR: Don’t buy Boring Go. And don’t listen to GoBooks GitHub, the repo owner “wrote” Boring Go and boosted his own book to the top of the list.
