Understanding the Factory Method Pattern in Go: A Practical Guide

Lately I’ve been revisiting some classic design patterns, but trying to approach them from a Go developer’s perspective — not just parroting the OOP explanations from Java books.

I wrote up a detailed breakdown of the Factory Method Pattern in Go, covering:

• Why Simple Factory starts to fall apart as systems scale
• How Factory Method helps keep creation logic local, extensible, and test-friendly
• Idiomatic Go examples (interfaces + structs, no fake inheritance)
• Common variations, like dynamic selection, registration-based creators, and test-time injection
• How it compares to Simple Factory and Abstract Factory
• When it’s probably overkill

If you’re building CLI tools, extensible systems, or just want your codebase to evolve without becoming a spaghetti factory of constructors, it might help.

Not trying to sell anything — just sharing because I found writing it clarified a lot for me too.

👉 https://medium.com/design-bootcamp/understanding-the-factory-method-pattern-in-go-a-practical-guide-86c0d1ca537b

Happy to discuss or hear how others approach this in Go!