Recently I'm interested in Golang.
When I was learning Python I kicked off a terminal shell and just practised throwing it different data, files, making many trivial silly operations, it's such a nice way to interact with a new language and it's super helpful for writing new programs.
I wonder- I guess because Golang is a compiled language like Java it's not possible to have such a terminal shell. Is that right? If so- what's the real technical reason why it can't work?
Not enough reputation for a comment so I am putting this here.
I Felt the same way when I first started using golang having used python for years. I have since decided that for anything beyond trivial coding (which can be done on the go playground) I end up writing a script for anyways and it's really not much harder to add in the boiler plate stuff.
The key I believe is that Go compiles fast enough that I think most people haven't really noticed an issue with just recompiling and running the entire program to see their changes.
You are right though, Go is compiled. This is fundamentally different than say Java or Python which both use Virtual Machines to generate code which it then executes. You can't run a Java program or Python program without the JVM or python interpreter respectively. A go program on the other hand once compiled can be distributed directly with no dependancies, one reason that many people love it for deployment.