The Boot.dev Beat. July 2024

One million lessons. Well, to be precise, you have all completed 1,122,050 lessons just in June. That’s nuts. I was so preoccupied with how cool it is that you all are learning so much that I’m late on this newsletter. Sorry ‘bout that.

Humbly, Lane

Patch notes

1. 7-Hour Python Course Walkthrough

Trshpuppy is an incredible developer (and past podcast guest) who recently released a complete 7-hour walkthrough of the Boot.dev Python course. If you’ve been struggling with the Python course then this video is a must-watch. It’s also completely free, feel free to share it with anyone who might benefit.

2. FP and Static Site Generator Overhaul

Our Functional Programming Course and Static Site Generator Project have had a complete overhaul. Tons of new lessons were added and updated. These were frequently cited by students as being too difficult for their spots in the curriculum, so we spent a lot of time smoothing out the difficulty curve.

3. Adjusted Gem Prices

We did some game balancing this month, in particular, seer stones now cost quite a bit more (10 gems). Gem drops from chests were nerfed across the board. Our goal is to continue tuning the game to only encourage the best study habits.

4. New Karma System

In our Discord community members earn Karma for being great participants. We’ve:

• Removed karma rewards for simply posting
• Added a significant karma reward for helping others in the forums
• Added the ability to bookmark posts for later (react with a bookmark or scroll emoji)

5. Miscellaneous improvements

• New art for the homepage
• Small bug fixes
• Difficulty scores show on individual lessons (updated dynamically from completion data)

What is yet to come

• New Course: “Learn Git 2”
• New Course: “Learn Memory Management in C”
• New Course: “Linux System Administration” (this is a working title, we’re still cooking…)
• New Project: “Build an Asteroids Game”
• Moving existing courses to the Boot.dev CLI

Backend Banter Podcast

This month’s episodes include:

• #061 - Forget SQL, use Typescript feat. Thomas Ballinger
• #060 - Adam Elmore: IndieHacker Extraordinaire
• #059 - The Internet == AWS? feat. James Q Quick
• #058 - Stop Making Private Variables feat. BadCop
• #057 - AI Bros Suck.. feat. Ken Wheeler

If you haven’t yet, subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts! If you leave a rating and a review, I’ll love you forever.