Go takes an interesting approach to parsing strings to time objects, and formatting time objects as strings. Instead of using codes like most languages to represent component parts of a date/time string representation—like %Y for a 4-digit year like “2011” or %b for an abbreviated month name like “Feb”—Go uses a mnemonic device: there is a standard time, which is:

Mon Jan 2 15:04:05 MST 2006  (MST is GMT-0700)

Or put another way:

01/02 03:04:05PM '06 -0700

Instead of having to remember or lookup the traditional formatting codes for functions like strftime, you just count one-two-three-four and each place in the standard time corresponds to a component of a date/time object (the Time type in Go): one for the month, two for day of the month, three for the hour (in 12-hour time), four for the minutes, etc.

The way you put this into action is by putting together the parts of the standard time in a layout string that matches the format of either the string representation you want to parse into a Time object or the opposite direction, when you want to generate a string representation from an Time object.

Parsing:

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "time"
)

func main() {
    value  := "Thu, 05/19/11, 10:47PM"
    // Writing down the way the standard time would look like formatted our way
    layout := "Mon, 01/02/06, 03:04PM"
    t, _ := time.Parse(layout, value)
    fmt.Println(t)
}

// => "Thu May 19 22:47:00 +0000 2011"

Formatting:

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "time"
)

func main() {
    t := time.SecondsToLocalTime(1305861602)
    t.ZoneOffset = -4*60*60
    fmt.Println(t.Format("2006-01-02 15:04:05 -0700"))
}

// => "2011-05-20 03:20:02 -0400"

There are predefined constants in the time package for common formats such as RFCs 822 and 3339.

The use of a mnemonic over obscure formatting codes I think reflects the pragmatism of Go’s developers and their focus on creating a language that makes its users more productive. While it is a break with tradition to abandon strftime-style formatting, they probably recognized that most developers, no matter how experienced, reach for man strftime or similar documentation more often than not (hell, I have a mug with the codes printed on it), and each time they do, it is an expensive context switch, in terms of lost focus. Writing the standard time down the way yours looks may be quirky, but it's easy to recall, and it also happens to match the shape of your time string, syntatically.

It’s fascinating to see a language with the pedigree of Go—from the minds of long-time C and Unix developers—toss aside certain old and venerable ways of doing things. But it’s consistent with a language that’s relatively small (in the good way of being comprehensible and coherent), focused on efficiency, and careful in what it includes.