Why use the `go` keyword when calling a function?

I was going through an example of a TCP server. They defined a function and called it with:

go handleRequest(conn)

I thought it was weird seeing the go keyword, so I tried it without:

handleRequest(conn)

To my surprise, this worked!

• If both work the same way, why use the go keyword at all?

• If they work differently, what is the difference?

• Is there a certain style guideline to use, or should you just use personal preference?

go starts a goroutine, which is managed by golang run-time.

It can either run on the current OS thread, or it can run on a different OS thread automatically.

You can refer to basic golang documents for this, for example, one item in Google search keyword goroutine is golang concurrency.

Stack Overflow Q#26006856, score: 92