In this video, I show you how to set up Windows for developing Go applications with WSL2. You will learn how to install WSL2 and Ubuntu on Windows and how you can use it and Visual Studio Code for developing Go applications.

Understanding Linux and the common workflow and tools are essential when developing microservices as it is the environment that your code will ultimately be deployed to. WSL2 allows you to bring the best of Windows while running the power of Linux under the covers. In my humble opinion, this is the best way to write Go code on Windows and a method I use every day.

We will walk through all the steps of installing the software and setting up your environment before testing things out by creating a simple Go web application. This video is not intended to be a comprehensive introduction to Go or Linux but shows you the best way for developing Go code on Windows.

Installing WSL on Windows:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10

Installing Go:
https://golang.org/doc/install

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
03:25 Enabling WSL for Widows
04:58 Enabling Virtual Machine Platform for Windows
05:55 Updating the WSL2 Kernel
06:33 Setting WSL2 as the default for new Linux distributions
07:42 Installing Ubuntu on Windows
11:26 Installing Visual Studio Code
13:58 Installing Go
20:24 Installing VS Code Go Extension
21:12 Creating a simple application
29:45 Using Go packages