Recap: Attending GopherCon UK in London
Just got back from GopherCon UK 2024 in London (August 14-17) at The Brewery on Chiswell Street. First time back in London since 2015, and the city has definitely changed — much more hectic and crowded than I remember.
Exploring London
Arrived a day early to get some sightseeing in. Walked along the Thames past Tower Bridge, Parliament, and Big Ben. The weather was surprisingly good for London in August, so I kept going all the way to Buckingham Palace and took the tube back from Green Park to Bethnal Green where my hotel was.
The city feels different than nine years ago. More international, way more crowded, faster pace. Shoreditch and Old Street have completely transformed — what used to be grittier is now tech startup central. Co-working spaces, trendy coffee shops, and tech company offices everywhere.
Between sessions I explored around the venue. Grabbed lunch at Borough Market one day — still great, though more touristy now. Took a quick trip to Camden Town one evening, which still has the alternative vibe but obviously more commercialized.
Public transport worked well despite being packed. The Tube saved a lot of time, though rush hour was brutal. Good reminder why I prefer Hamburg’s pace.
Conference highlights
Cameron Balahan from Google kicked things off with “The Business of Go”. He made an interesting point about Go potentially becoming the language of choice for AI in production — not just cloud infrastructure anymore, the use cases are expanding.
A few talks that stood out:
Boost Applications Performance with Profile Guided Optimization by Michael Pratt — he explained how PGO works under the hood: function inlining, escape analysis, and more. The kind of optimization I can actually use at work without refactoring everything.
Go Channels Slow Down with More CPUs by Grant Stephens — a bizarre performance issue at Fastly where channel performance degraded with more CPUs due to internal locking. Great problem analysis and storytelling. A bit of Go internals, some detective work, and practical solutions. One of the most memorable talks.
Production-Ready “Hello, World!” by Daniela Petruzalek — building a production-ready Hello World using only the standard library, as a kata. The interesting part was how it forces you to think about what “production-ready” actually means. Simple concept, but it got me thinking about our own deployment standards.
The venue worked well — decent acoustics and enough space to talk between sessions. Easy to get to, plenty of food nearby.
Wrap-up
Worth the trip. Good technical content, and I got to see how much London has changed over the past decade.
Maybe next year too :)
Jamie Tanna has detailed notes on all the talks at https://www.jvt.me/posts/2024/08/16/gophercon-uk-2024/