Programmers tend to work on many projects and it is good practice to have the source code separate from nonprogramming-related files. It is a common practice to have the source code in a separate location or workspace. Every programming language has its own conventions on how the language-related projects should be set up and Go is no exception to this.

GOPATH is the most important environment variable the developer has to set. It tells the Go compiler where to find the source code for the project and its dependencies. There are conventions within the GOPATH that need to be followed, and they have to deal with folder hierarchies.