The Boot.dev Beat. February 2024

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.

Regards, Lane

Patch notes

1. New Course: Learn Shells and Terminals

Using a terminal is an invaluable skill for any developer, but it’s also often overlooked. When I got my CS degree, I had to teach myself how to navigate the command line, and I wish I had a course that would have taken me through all the fundamentals. That’s what this new course, Learn Shells and Terminals is all about. No need for you to suffer!

2. Lore

“The March of Time” is an online novel that we’re publishing chapter by chapter on Boot.dev. It’s the lore of Boots’ universe, and we hope you’ll enjoy it. It’s not required reading by any means, but if you enjoy the legendarium we’re building to keep learning fun, you might want to check it out.

3. Big Boots Update

Your conversations with Boots are now saved, so you can pick them up where you left off or review them later! You can also quickly start a new conversation without needing to refresh the page.

Also, Boots used to only be available on multiple choice lessons after completing the assignment, and he wasn’t available on all lesson types. We’ve now made Boots available on all lesson types, and he works the same way in all of them!

4. Fellowship Achievements

Our Discord community is easily one of our most valuable features for students. We already had amazing senior developers and students in there helping out beginners, but we wanted to reward them for their efforts. We’ve added a new “Fellowship” achievement type that you can earn by helping out other students in the community.

What is yet to come

• More videos for the new “Shells and Terminals” course
• More videos for the “Learn to Get a Coding Job” course
• A global survey for everyone learning to code
• Challenges and reworking of the “Learn JavaScript” course
• More lore
• Boss battles (I’ll say no more at this time)
• Course on memory management
• Course on Git

Backend Banter Podcast

This month’s episodes include:

• #038 - I Got Caught Rolling my Own Auth… feat. Dev Agrawal
• #037 - Caddy Chronicles with Matt Holt
• #036 - BadCop’s Bash Breakdown
• #035 - Discussing Roc and functional systems with Richard Fieldman

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.

The cream of the crop

(Article) Rook to XSS: How I hacked chess.com with a rookie exploit

by Jacob

Jacob (unsure of his last name) wrote an amazing article about how he hacked chess.com. It’s a great read about web security and I was further amazed to learn that he’s only 17 years old!

(Article) Give Up Sooner

by Lane Wagner

Yeah yeah, so I wrote this one. I wouldn’t have published it if I didn’t think it was good. Clickbait title aside, it’s about knowing when to give up on a search for information, or rather, knowing when to bail on a local maximum. It should help you be a better “googler”.