Boot.dev Blog

The Boot.dev Beat. September 2025

Sep 08, 2025 by Lane Wagner

The training grounds are LIVE! 21,000 challenges have been generated between the launch and as I write this, and we’re just getting started. Big things to come.

Create a Course on Boot.dev

Sep 04, 2025 by Lane Wagner

We create most of our courses at Boot.dev in-house, but we also love to collaborate with talented authors! If you’re interested in creating a course for Boot.dev, here’s some preliminary info about how we work:

Boot.dev Launches the Training Grounds

Aug 27, 2025 by Lane Wagner

We’ve always said Boot.dev is fun… but we’ve never said it’s easy. Subscribe to my YouTube channel if this video was helpful!

The Boot.dev Beat. August 2025

Aug 04, 2025 by Lane Wagner

We ran the biggest hackathon I’ve ever been a part of (500+ participants!) and saw some incredible projects come out of it. Thanks to everyone that participated, I’m excited for the next one!

2025 Hackathon

Jul 25, 2025 by Lane Wagner

The 2025 Boot.dev Hackathon has been completed! We had an amazing turnout this year, with over 500 participants across two categories: Amateur and Pro. The projects were incredible, and the competition was fierce.

The Boot.dev Beat. July 2025

Jul 09, 2025 by Lane Wagner

This month we were heads down building a lot of background stuff for big releases that are coming up - but we still did manage to get a few new features out the door!

The Boot.dev Beat. June 2025

Jun 10, 2025 by Lane Wagner

We’ve capitulated into the vibe coding era? Well… not really. But it’s cool to understand how AI agents like Cursor and Claude Code work under the hood.

Are Boot.dev Courses Free?

May 23, 2025 by Lane Wagner

Sometimes folks get confused and wonder, are Boot.dev’s programming courses really free? First of all, the simple answer is yes, all of the content on Boot.dev is free. That means that all the lesson explanations, the explainer videos, and the starter code is free. You can get all of it (not just the first few chapters, or the first course) without ever becoming a paid member.

The Boot.dev Beat. May 2025

May 11, 2025 by Lane Wagner

Our biggest content release ever just dropped: the complete backend learning path, but now in Python and TypeScript! This is a massive update that we’ve been working on for a year, I hope you enjoy it!

The Boot.dev Beat. April 2025

Apr 27, 2025 by Lane Wagner

The Lord of the Mire has been the hardest boss yet (by far), weighing it with 150,000,000 HP. The community rallied during the event, dealing a whopping 132,282,452 damage in total, but not quite enough to bring him down.

The Boot.dev Beat. March 2025

Mar 07, 2025 by Lane Wagner

Our new JavaScript course is live! ThePrimeagen’s course on building your own HTTP server from scratch is just around the corner, and the TypeScript track couldn’t be closer.

The Boot.dev Beat. February 2025

Feb 04, 2025 by Lane Wagner

It’s official: TJ’s C course walkthrough was released before GTA6! This is a great month for Boot.dev, and for humanity as a whole.

18 Months with GPT-4: Now Can I Fire my Developers?

Jan 17, 2025 by Lane Wagner

As the founder of a company where my largest static expense is engineering salaries, I’m over here just chomping at the bit, eagerly awaiting the moment I can fire everyone and line my pockets with all those juicy savings. See, about one year ago, I wrote an article titled, “9 Months with GPT-4: Can I Fire my Developers Yet?” and I thought I’d give you a little update on Allan’s employment status.

The Boot.dev Beat. January 2025

Jan 02, 2025 by Lane Wagner

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.

Lists in Python

Dec 25, 2024 by Lane Wagner

Lists 🔗 A natural way to organize and store data is in a List. Some languages call them “arrays”, but in Python, we just call them lists. Think of all the apps you use and how many of the items in the app are organized into lists.

Loops in Python

Dec 23, 2024 by Lane Wagner

If you’re new to Python, or perhaps coding in general (welcome!), loops are what allow us to do the same thing over and over and over again, without having to re-type the same code each time. For example, let’s pretend I want to print the numbers 0-9.

Functions in Python

Dec 14, 2024 by Lane Wagner

Functions in Python allow us to reuse and organize code. For example, say we have some code that calculates the area of a circle:

Variables and Types in Python

Dec 13, 2024 by Lane Wagner

Variables are how we store data as our program runs. You’re probably already familiar with printing data by passing it straight into print():

The Boot.dev Beat. December 2024

Dec 06, 2024 by Lane Wagner

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

Nov 05, 2024 by Lane Wagner

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

Oct 21, 2024 by Lane Wagner

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

Oct 07, 2024 by Lane Wagner

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 [Deprecated]

Sep 23, 2024 by Lane Wagner

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 [Deprecated]

Sep 17, 2024 by Lane Wagner

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

Sep 04, 2024 by Lane Wagner

The aracnum 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.