Your goroutines need an exit plan.

A pipeline can leak goroutines when a downstream consumer stops reading. Upstream workers remain blocked on sends, retaining memory and resources. This Go walkthrough shows fan-out, fan-in, and explicit cancellation so work can stop across the pipeline. A channel buffer alone is a fragile fix when the amount of unconsumed work is unknown.

The Go Blog · Mar 13, 2014

Why it matters

Relevant whenever a worker pool, transfer, or background job can be cancelled before every result is consumed.

More context

Trace the shutdown path as carefully as the success path: who closes each channel, who signals cancellation, and which sends can remain blocked? The examples show how a cancellation signal lets every stage finish without assuming how many values remain.

Keep in mind

The article predates current Go conventions. Preserve the cancellation principle while checking modern context and library APIs.

Original read