Looking Ahead

Concurrency patterns are tools, not goals. The best concurrent code is often the simplest code that solves the problem correctly.

What You’ve Learned

This guide covered patterns for distributed systems:

• Channel Patterns: Fan-out/fan-in, multiplexing, timeouts
• Worker Patterns: Pools, pipelines, adaptive scaling
• Coordination: Distributed locks, leader election, semaphores
• Resilience: Circuit breakers, graceful shutdown, error handling
• Monitoring: Performance tracking and observability

Choosing the Right Pattern

Don’t use complex patterns just because you can. Start simple:

1. Identify the real problem - Is it coordination? Load? Failures?
2. Try the simplest solution first - Often basic channels work fine
3. Add complexity only when needed - Measure before optimizing
4. Consider maintenance cost - Complex patterns are harder to debug

Common Mistakes

• Over-engineering: Using worker pools for 10 items
• Under-engineering: No error handling or timeouts
• Cargo culting: Copying patterns without understanding them
• Ignoring context: Not using context.Context for cancellation

Go’s Evolution

Go continues evolving. Generics changed some patterns. Future versions may add new concurrency primitives. Stay flexible and keep learning.

Final Advice

The best concurrent code is boring. It works reliably, handles errors gracefully, and is easy to understand. Clever concurrency tricks usually cause more problems than they solve.

Focus on correctness first, then performance. A slow, correct program is better than a fast, broken one.