From 27ed6199dc84d6c9921270c812dbf41c5b65a676 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: jbranchaud <jbranchaud@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 7 Mar 2015 23:55:11 -0600
Subject: [PATCH] Add Not So Random as a go til.

---
 README.md           |  4 ++++
 go/not-so-random.md | 46 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 2 files changed, 50 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 go/not-so-random.md

diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 4696f0d..d905c7a 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -15,6 +15,10 @@ smart people at [Hashrocket](http://hashrocket.com/).
 - [Stashing Untracked Files](git/stashing-untracked-files.md)
 - [Verbose Commit Message](git/verbose-commit-message.md)
 
+### go
+
+- [Not So Random](go/not-so-random.md)
+
 ### rails
 
 - [Attribute Was](rails/attribute-was.md)
diff --git a/go/not-so-random.md b/go/not-so-random.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ac32cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/go/not-so-random.md
@@ -0,0 +1,46 @@
+# Not So Random
+
+Go's `rand` package makes it easy to generate all sorts of random numbers.
+What they don't tell you though is that the default seed is `1`. So if you
+write a program like so:
+
+```go
+package main
+
+import "fmt"
+import "math/rand"
+
+func main() {
+    stuff := []string{
+        "one",
+        "two",
+        "three",
+        "four",
+    }
+    fmt.Println(stuff[rand.Intn(len(stuff))])
+}
+```
+
+and then run it, you will get output like:
+
+```
+three
+```
+
+and any subsequent runs of the program will continue to produce `three`. Not
+exactly what we are looking for.
+
+If you want your program to be a little less predictable, you will want to
+seed it yourself, perhaps with the current time, instead of `1`. Try adding
+the following to the beginning of the `main` function:
+
+```go
+rand.Seed( time.Now().UTC().UnixNano())
+```
+
+You'll also want to import the `time` package.
+
+Things should *appear* to be a bit more random now.
+
+source: [Jake Worth](https://twitter.com/jwworth) and
+[Stackoverflow](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12321133/golang-random-number-generator-how-to-seed-properly)