pointers - Passing by reference and value in Go to functions

Question

I am a bit confused about passing by reference and value in Go.

I've seen this explained of the * in front of a type.

• in front of a type name, means that the declared variable will store an address of another variable of that type (not a value of that type).

This just doesn't make sense to me.

In Java if I was passing a Database instance into a function I would do

 databaseFunction(DatabaseType db) {
      // do something
}

However in the go example I have it's passed like so.

func PutTasks(db *sql.DB) echo.HandlerFunc {

}

Why do we need to have the asterisk in front of the type?

According to this cheat sheet, I found.

func PrintPerson(p *Person) ONLY receives the pointer address (reference)

I don't understand why I would only want to send a pointer address as a parameter.

Answer 1

Waitting for answers