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Thanks for watching <3

You forgot to mention one big point about pointers: Escape Analysis. The moment you reference a pointer to something and move it beyond the function scope (e.g passing a reference to another function or having a pointer receiver) the Go Compiler is moving the data to the heap. Accessing data from the heap rather than from the stack can be around 100x - 1000x slower.


func Foo(bar *string) {} // bar is moved to the heap, when accessing bar.ANYTHING, then the runtime has to follow the pointer address and do couple of memory operations
func Foo(bar string){} // bar is in the function stack, runtime can access bar with o(1) operation

You could avoid accessing the heap by making use of Golangs CPU inline caching, which requires you to make decisions about locality and temporality of your data and how you access it.

I love that you code stuff from zero to explain your concepts. It shows how good you understand of that subject

TL;DR: in GoLang function parameters passed by value by default

Pretty simple explanation.

Another possible reason to not use pointers is to reduce memory allocation in the heap. Allocation is not free operation and less memory allocation leads to less GC cycles. Coping the structure usually is not a problem because this memory will be allocated on stack frame and will be unloaded after function execution which not involve GC at all.

Anthony thanks for the video. Now I am willing to watch a guide of zero allocation programs🙂

Finally a youtube channel that gets to the point, u’d make a killer teacher btw.

8:55 string size is 16 (ptr+len) bytes, slice size is 24 (ptr+len+cap) byte so only these 16/24 bytes get copied, the actual underlying data is stored on the heap and is not copied

You are the king of making things simple. what an amazing video

One of the best explanation of why!

As always, what a great explanation Anthony. Keep posting valuable content!

Thanks a ton! I was always confused about pointers and struct methods in Go, but you explained it so clearly—it finally clicked!

Thanks for this video .
Truly these are the only two reasons to use pointers,
especially the second one it's really useful.

This definitely trips up Go newbies. Good video! 😀

What a great channel, so happy I got it in my recommendations

No one can explain any better!!! Thank you!

You are great dude! Keep it up!

Really love your style and pace of video. Great job.

thanks for the pointers!

Man please  can you do a series on subjects like that “ when and how to use them” in the golang language? Example maps

Many thanks 👏Very useful video.