The Boot.dev Beat. May 2024

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.

Dutifully, Lane

Patch notes

1. New Course: “Learn Pub/Sub Architecture”

This new course is an addition to the deeper learning section of the platform: it’s a very fun course that’s intended to be taken once you’ve completed the entire backend learning track. You’ll build a real-time game using a pub/sub architecture with RabbitMQ and Go.

2. Chests (Lootboxes)

We’ve removed XP and gem rewards from achievements, role updates, and daily quests. Instead, chests are now the primary reward mechanism. The higher the rarity of the chest, the more likely you are to get more valuable items and more gems when you open it. You can earn chests by:

1. Completing daily quests
2. Earning sharpshooter sprees
3. Defeating bosses

3. Seer Stones, Potions, and Baked Salmon

We added 3 new consumable items! These items are dropped in chests and can also be purchased with gems.

1. Potions - Grant a temporary XP boost
2. Seer Stones - Peek a lesson’s solution without losing XP
3. Baked Salmon - Chat with Boots without losing XP

4. Boot.dev CLI

We’ve moved all “HTTP Test” lesson types to make use of our brand-new CLI tool. This tool runs tests against your projects on your local machine and uses websockets to instantly update your browser with the results. It’s a big step towards making Boot.dev more interactive for the lessons you complete locally. The new Git course will make heavy use of it.

5. Miscellaneous improvements

• Improvements to Vim mode
• XP bonuses are reworked to be more dependent on the difficulty of a lesson
• New pages for instructors to view their courses and social links
• Speed improvements to the app
• No longer get logged out after 30 days
• Fix SQL syntax highlighting

What is yet to come

• New Course: “Learn Git”
• New Course: “Learn Memory Management in C”
• Moving existing courses to the Boot.dev CLI
• A new boss to fight
• The ability to sell unwanted items for gems

Backend Banter Podcast

There is a brand new site, and because we moved hosting to Spotify, you can now also see the video version of the podcast on Spotify.

This month’s episodes include:

• #051 - Should you grind Leetcode? Ft. Neetcode
• #050 - Python is faster than Rust? Ft. john Crickett
• #049 - Is OCaml SaaS ready? Ft. Leandro Ostera
• #048 - Your command line sucks. Ft. Bash Bunni

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.