Boot.dev Blog
The Boot.dev Beat. January 2025
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
Fastest boss defeat in the history of Boot.dev, a new AWS course, embers are live, and my children just won't stop being sick for more than 4 days at a time. Win some, lose some.
The Boot.dev Beat. December 2024
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
Potions got a rework, solutions were added to the Git course, and I've been sick for like 10 days straight... hope your Holidays are staying healthier than mine!
The Boot.dev Beat. November 2024
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
Mortrunk has fallen. The community rallied in our Halloween boss fight spectacular. Well done. The Boots' aura XP boost even hit 2x for a while there.
The State of Learning to Code - 2024 Report
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
I've been building a learning curriculum for backend developers for the last 3 years, but I've mostly been relying on qualitative feedback and my own intuitions.
The Boot.dev Beat. October 2024
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
The "learn computer science basics" section of the backend developer learning path is now complete! We have no big plans to make serious modifications (tbh I always say this though, so idk). To be clear, that's the first half of the track complete - the first 13 courses up to the personal project.
Build a Web Server in Go
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
Let's build a fully-fledged HTTP server from scratch in Go. This course assumes you already have a solid understanding of Go. If you don't, take a step back and take our Go course.
Build a Blog Aggregator in Go
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
We're going to build an RSS feed aggregator in Go! It's a web server that allows clients to:
The Boot.dev Beat. September 2024
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
The arcanum was soooooo close to defeating the Hound of Zaggoroth in this month's boss fight. 88,297,514 xp was gained over the course of the event, and 90,000,000 was all that was needed to secure victory. It's a shame, but we can't win them all. The hound will return soon.
Is there a course on <insert technology>?
by Casper Andersson
In the Boot.dev Discord server, this question appears now and then. Will there be a Rust course? Why is there no Django course? Can you add a Spring Boot course? Maybe there will be in the future. Maybe not. It's impossible to cover everything that everyone wants. But that's no reason to not do the curriculum. Even universities with their 3-4 year degrees only cover a fraction of all there is. Instead, it prepares you to specialize and learn what you want.
The Boot.dev Beat. August 2024
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
I'm writing this one a bit early because I'm going out of town next week... better early than late?
When to Use Pointers in Go
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
Pointers are variables that store memory addresses. Use them when code needs to update an original value or when nil matters, not because you assume they're faster. If performance is the reason you're considering a pointer, measure the code first.
The Boot.dev Beat. July 2024
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
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.
The Boot.dev Beat. June 2024
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
ThePrimeagen's Git course is live. A new boss battle is on the horizon, and we've made massive speed improvements to the site. Hope you enjoy!
The Boot.dev Beat. May 2024
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
A new Pub/Sub Architecture course, lootable chests, and ThePrimeagen's Git course is only a couple weeks away. It's been a good April. glhf.
The Boot.dev Beat. April 2024
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
Pythogoras returned in our second community-wide boss battle. He was vanquished, and there was much rejoicing. Happy coding.
Maybe You Do Need Kubernetes
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
Theo has this great video on Kubernetes, currently titled "You Don't Need Kubernetes". I'm a Kubernetes enjoyer (I even wrote a course on it, but I'm not here to argue about that. The part of the video I do want to discuss has nothing to do with k8s. It's where Theo draws the "Line of Primeagen".
The Boot.dev Beat. March 2024
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
Pythogoras escaped this month. The community rallied against the Serpent God, and while he was wounded and beaten back, he escaped. We'll be trying again later this month. Happy coding.
The Boot.dev Beat. February 2024
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
609,179. That's the number of lessons you crazy folks have completed on Boot.dev in the last 30 days. Good work my fellow pupils.
Give Up Sooner
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
As a developer, how many times each day do you look something up online? I'm not talking about a simple piece of syntax, I'm talking about the things that are a bit harder to find. For example:
The Boot.dev Beat. January 2024
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
Hope you had a wonderful holiday! I know you might not have been able to take time off, but I hope you were able to spend some time with family and friends. I spent the whole week driving up and down the state of Utah. It was fun, but I'm happy to be back in my office. Kids can be exhausting. Love 'em, but they're exhausting.
Troubleshooting the Boot.dev Code Editor: Common Snags
by Hunter Beckmann - Head of engineering at Boot.dev
As a Boot.dev student, you may have encountered frustrating moments when your code editor freezes or is stuck "Setting up your environment", leaving you wondering what went wrong. Don't worry; we're here to help. These issues can be caused by various factors, and in this blog post, we'll explore some common culprits and provide solutions to help you get back to coding smoothly.
9 Months with GPT-4: Can I Fire my Developers Yet?
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
GitHub has been re-founded on copilot, rumors of an AI superior to GPT-4 abound, and you're trying to decide if it's worth it to learn what a red-black tree is.
The Boot.dev Beat. December 2023
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
Hope you had a splendid Turkey month. My wife, two kids, and I spent Thanksgiving in southern Utah. The fresh air was nice, AQI here in Northern Utah is 100+ right now... wouldn't recommend. Anyway, back to coding.
You're Not Qualified to Have an Opinion on TDD
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
One of the marks of a good senior developer is that they have lots of interesting opinions. After years of working on different software projects, they'll be able to passionately explain why they think MongoDB is ass, paired programming is no fun, and the GitHub CLI changed their workflow.
Put that Framework Down Before Someone Gets Hurt
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
There is only one question that ignites my inner rage more than "How do I get a developer job in 3 months?"? That question is:
