Boot.dev Blog
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:
The Boot.dev Beat. November 2023
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
Hope you had a fantastic Halloween. I spent last weekend in Seattle with Allan and Hunter (the other two full-timers here at Boot.dev) at the DotA 2 International. Absolute blast. I've never been to such an enormous gaming event in person. Ah, well, back to coding.
Queue Data Structure in Python: Ordering at Its Best
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
A queue is an efficient collection of ordered items. New items can be added to one side, and removed from the other side.
Understanding Stacks: Python Implementation of a Core Data Structure
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
A stack is an abstract data type that serves as a collection of elements. The name "stack" originates from the analogy of items physically stacked on top of each other. Just like a stack of plates at a buffet, plates can be added, removed, and viewed from the top. However, plates further down are not immediately accessible.
Can Go Be Used in Web Development?
by Natalie Schooner - Computer science educator and technical writer
Recently I saw an interesting post on Reddit: "I would like to be more full-stack," user Fenugurod said. "I was studying Tailwindcsss and I'm pretty sure I can create really nice UIs with it. But what do you guys think about web development with Go? Most of my friends simply say to embrace the JS ecosystem with Nuxt or Next and use Go simply as an API."
The Boot.dev Beat. October 2023
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
Happy All Hallow's Eve. I hope you enjoy this month's cover art. It might be my favorite so far.
What Does a Web Developer Earn?
by Natalie Schooner - Computer science educator and technical writer
As always, the short answer is easiest: On average, according to Indeed, an American web developer earns \$81,034 per year.
Learn to Code the Slow Way
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
Ever since starting Boot.dev, I've been flooded with what I call "quicksand questions". On the surface, a quicksand question seems like a good question. If you could answer it, it would catapult you from where you are (nightshift at the Wendy's drive-in) to where you want to be (telling friends that you work at Netflix btw).
Top 10 Books on Web Development in 2026
by Natalie Schooner - Computer science educator and technical writer
If you’re looking for good web development books, you’re probably interested in becoming a web developer. Makes sense – great pay, solid job security, and interesting work. But beyond that broad goal, you might be looking for some web development reading to satisfy other goals.
The Boot.dev Beat. September 2023
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
The best part of working on Boot.dev is seeing you all make almost unbelievable strides in not only your understanding of fundamental concepts, but what you can now build from scratch. It's not just that, I've been hearing a lot of stories about the confidence that's being gained by our alumnis after shipping so much code. That's a critical part of the journey.
Can I Use Python for Web Development?
by Natalie Schooner - Computer science educator and technical writer
I love giving a short answer to these: yes, 100%, Python is a great tool for web development.
The One Thing I'd Change About Go
by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
Go is built for grug brained programmers like me.
