> but it's performant enough to run circles around a lot of high level languages and dynamic languages

It ain’t running circles around any managed language, with perhaps the exception of Python.

C#, Java, JS all have comparably good performances, sometimes much better - e.g. when GC can’t be avoided.

Channel arrows are basically just read/write operations.

If `ch` is a channel, then this expression means "value obtained from reading from the channel":

    <-ch

And this expression means "write value x into the channel":

    ch <- x

Both expressions can be used as a case inside select statement:

    select {
    case val := <-ch:
        // ...
    case ch <- val:
        // ...
    }

Which will execute exactly one case, depending on which channel becomes "ready" first - channel is ready for reading if there is another goroutine blocked on a write operation, and ready for writing if there is another goroutine blocked on a read operation.

You say you're from C background - if you've ever worked will file descriptors you will notice that channels are basically userspace file descriptors. Channel reading and writing is isomorphic to read() and write() syscalls, and select keyword is isomorphic to select() syscall.

Hopefully this clears up the whole channel syntax thing. I just hope you weren't trolling.