I recommend starting with http://tour.golang.org/#1.

Yes, the Go tool comes with package-management capabilities. "go get labix.org/v2/mgo" will download the very excellent MongoDB driver mgo, for example.

But then actually implementing something useful is cryptic and obscure. I tried figuring out how to connect to a postgresql server following the spaghetti documentation of https://github.com/bmizerany/pq and http://golang.org/pkg/database/sql/ and have yet to find anything useful. Hacking around only leaves me with frustration. Searching around only leads me to unhelpful descriptions of what the GO command does in MSSQL Server.

Seriously? What is "cryptic" about db = sql.Open(...); db.Exec(); db.Query(); db.Close() etc.?

From https://github.com/bmizerany/pq/blob/master/conn_test.go:

  func TestExec(t *testing.T) {
	db := openTestConn(t)
	defer db.Close()

	_, err := db.Exec("CREATE TEMP TABLE temp (a int)")
	if err != nil {
		t.Fatal(err)
	}

	r, err := db.Exec("INSERT INTO temp VALUES (1)")
	if err != nil {
		t.Fatal(err)
	}

What is it exactly that you tried and failed? Because looking at conn_test.go the API is dead simple and pretty much like any other db API of this kind.

If you have Go questions and can't find the answer anywhere, feel free to post to StackOverflow or http://reddit.com/r/golang

You will get an answer quite fast.

Neat, is there something like virtualenv or rvm so I can install it locally not systemwide?

Just change GOPATH and you're done.