First Personal Project
Build a personal project on your own, completely from scratch, then submit it to the community for feedback.
Author
Lane Wagner
Lane is a back-end engineer and the lead instructor of Boot.dev. He has taught over one million students worldwide, on Boot.dev, FreeCodeCamp, YouTube and the Backend Banter podcast. Lane worked as a backend engineer writing Go, Python and TypeScript, then moved into engineering management and a couple of years later left to build Boot.dev full-time.
Allan
Maintainer
Matt
Maintainer
Dan
Maintainer
Hunter
Maintainer
20 Hours
of content
4 Addicting
lessons
Earn a certificate
of completion
Learn online
at your pace
What will you learn?
You can't truly become a developer if you can't build your own stuff. Theory and foundations are important, but you also need to be able to fly solo. The purpose of this project is two-fold: a chance to put your skills into practice and to add another project to your portfolio. Well-built personal projects will help you land interviews and jobs, so make sure to put in the effort!
Join 1,036 students in the First Personal Project course
Read reviews of their learning experiences
This lesson exceeded my expectations. I went in thinking I knew the basics, but the deeper dives into trade-offs and edge cases were exactly what I needed. The instructor didn’t just show ‘happy path’ solutions: they demonstrated how to think about failure modes, performance bottlenecks, and future extensibility. The capstone project, while optional, gave me the perfect sandbox to experiment and get feedback.
Nala
Germany
Challenging but rewarding.
Katy Senia
Tampa, FL
I appreciated how the instructor broke down the core concepts into digestible steps. The examples were practical and mirrored what I encounter in my day-to-day work. In particular, the section on error handling and observability tied everything together. If I had a minor nitpick, it would be that the pacing sped up in the last module, but the accompanying notes and code samples made it easy to revisit and cement the ideas.
Aftab Alam
Sector 104, Noida, India
Helpful examples and explanations.
James Heffernan
Maine, United States
Challenging but rewarding.
Erik Castricum
Castricum // Holland
This lesson exceeded my expectations. I went in thinking I knew the basics, but the deeper dives into trade-offs and edge cases were exactly what I needed. The instructor didn’t just show ‘happy path’ solutions: they demonstrated how to think about failure modes, performance bottlenecks, and future extensibility. The capstone project, while optional, gave me the perfect sandbox to experiment and get feedback.
Daniel Vasquez
State College PA, USA
Great lesson, super clear.
nkwuda theophilus onyebuchi
Lagos, Nigeria
Challenging but rewarding.
Dave Thackeray
Manchester
Appreciated the tips on common pitfalls and debugging.
Madhvi Patel
Stockholm Sweden
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Mediocrity doesn't cut it anymore
The only way to become a great developer is to write a lot of code
Avoid tutorial hell
by writing a ton of code
Stay motivated with
a game-like curriculum
Build portfolio projects
to prove your skills
Delve deeper
into foundational concepts
Learn flexibly online
without interrupting your life
For 1% the price of college
to minimize your financial risk
Frequently asked Questions
Got questions? We've got answers
Yes! It's free to create an account and start learning. You'll get all the immersive and interactive features for free for a few chapters. After that, if you still haven't paid for a membership, you'll be in read-only (content only) mode.
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