Miscs

12 Codecademy Alternatives That Will Get You Where You Need to Go

May 04, 2023 by Natalie Schooner

Just last month, Codecademy was sold to Skillsoft for $525 million. Not too shabby, and entirely well-deserved if you ask me. I’ll be straight with you, I love Codecademy. Maybe you’re wondering why I’m opening with that in an article about its alternatives, but I want to start with the history so you can grasp what Codecademy alternatives are good for.

As a Developer, What Hardware Do You Truly Need?

Apr 21, 2023 by Lane Wagner

Let’s be real here: we live in an age where everyone and their dog seems to think they need the latest, most expensive gadgets to get anything done. But when it comes to learning how to code, do you really need that shiny, wallet-draining powerhouse of a machine?

Using GitHub Issues to Hack Together A Feedback System

Jul 31, 2022 by Lane Wagner

Boot.dev has been my side-project for the last couple of years now. Being a learning path for backend developers focused on quality over quantity, I knew early on that it needed to have a really tight feedback loop from students. We had (and still have) a Discord server where myself and the students hang out, and that worked okay at first. Unfortunately, Discord channels have a couple problems when it comes to issue tracking:

How Not to Ask for Help Online

May 20, 2022 by Lane Wagner

I’ve spent an unhealthy amount of time online over the course of my life, and in the last couple years I’ve been managing a Discord server for people who are learning computer science. Like all online communities, we have ban, kick, and moderation policies so that we’re not overrun with spammers and other non-contributors. However, I’m not perfect, and I have realized recently that we get a decent number of members who at first glance seemed like a spammer, but it turns out they just have no idea how to communicate online in a way that’s useful to themselves and others.

Top 10 Communities For Learning to Code

Apr 20, 2022 by Zulie Rane

Why you need a coding community 🔗 The one thing that every programmer has in common, whether they’ve only ever implemented a “Hello World” program or they’re considered a “senior” software engineer, is the need to continuously learn. New technologies, programming languages, frameworks, libraries, and conventions are constantly being introduced to the industry. As a beginner, it can be hard to suss out what you need to know to enter the profession, and once you’re a proficient coder, it’s tiring to constantly investigate trending topics in tech.

An Overview of Boot.dev's Full-Stack Architecture

Jan 10, 2022 by Lane Wagner

Because I’ve had several inquiries on this topic, I thought it would be interesting to publish some information on how the boot.dev website and platform work, and how I’ve organized all the technologies I’m using. I’ll do my best to keep this list updated in the future as I migrate from older tools and technologies to newer ones, but assume that this might be a bit out of date by the time you read it.

The Best Product Managers Have The Worst Ideas

Nov 02, 2021 by Lane Wagner

It’s hard finding good product people. That fact is really a tragedy because they are probably the most important part of any product-focused organization. I think there is a misconception in the software industry that product managers have a good sense of “what users want”, “what the next feature should be” or “ux design”. In reality, I’ve come to believe that the best product managers aren’t good at any of that, and they know it.

Well, We Might Have a Video Call for That!

Sep 27, 2021 by Lane Wagner

This article contains some of my thoughts on communications for distributed teams and is a response to No, we won’t have a video call for that! by Florian Hass. Read his article first if you haven’t yet, he makes some great points!

16 Great Coding Challenges You Can Try Out

Jun 24, 2021 by Zulie Rane

Coding challenges are a fun way to improve your coding quickly. When I started to learn coding in school, coding challenges were the furthest thing from my mind. In fact, I was struck with one particular issue: I didn’t really want to learn to code. I didn’t care enough about coding. I didn’t care about the language. I wanted to get a decent grade and get out.

The 10x Meeting - Solving for Too Many Meetings

May 10, 2021 by Lane Wagner

Perhaps you’ve heard of the fabled 10x developer (or 10x engineer) - the one on the team that’s 10x as productive as their average colleague. While many, including myself, doubt the existence of such people, I do think there are meetings that are 10x as productive as the average meeting. My goal in this article is to break down their properties so we can have 10x fewer meetings.

How I Organize My Local Development Environment

Mar 17, 2021 by Lane Wagner

When I was just getting into coding, I was very disorganized. I would create a new text file in My Documents, work on it, never create a Git repository, accidentally delete it later, you get the idea. Nowadays I’m quite the opposite. To be honest, the thing that made me get my act together was the quite unpopular and now deprecated GOPATH that early versions of Go required developers to work in. I think it was the right move to not force that organization as a requirement, but I actually quite liked the method personally, and still use a version of it to this day.

The Benefits of Gamified Learning

Jan 20, 2021 by Lane Wagner

Why was that adjustment to college classes so hard? Sitting through hours of lectures and PowerPoints can be challenging for even the most dedicated students.

NLP is Hard Because Even Humans Don't Agree

Jan 19, 2021 by Lane Wagner

In my full-time role at Nuvi, I’ve been lucky enough to work on a team where we’re able to push the boundaries in the natural language processing field. We built out several different “facets” that we score text on, including sentiment, emotion, vulgarity, tense, and currently, we’re working on promotion detection.

The 8 Most Popular Coding Languages of 2022

Jan 04, 2021 by Zulie Rane

And more importantly, how to choose the most popular coding language you should learn. 🔗 How can you decide what the most popular coding language is? It’s like trying to pick the most popular ice cream flavor - everyone has a favorite. The truth is that different coders prefer different coding languages for different reasons, and just when you think you can say a single coding language reigns supreme, a new one crops up, or an older one becomes relevant for a new application.

Top Web Development Programming Languages; A Comparison

Nov 04, 2020 by Lane Wagner

The software development industry is growing at a break-neck pace. Currently, there are close to 19 million software developers in the world, and this number is expected to double by 2030.

Top 4 Coding Languages To Learn For Beginners in 2022

Oct 07, 2020 by Lane Wagner

Coding languages, tools, and frameworks are in a constant state of flux, improvement, deprecation, and popularity swings. Let’s take a look at the top 4 languages for new programmers to learn in 2021.

Education's Shameful State of the Art

Oct 05, 2020 by Lane Wagner

Higher education had its problems before Covid-19. Now the crippling inefficiencies, backbreaking cost, and lack of alternatives are being forced into the spotlight. We’re working on what will eventually grow into the alternative to overpriced universities and ineffective Bootcamps at boot.dev. In the meantime, let’s take a look at education’s biggest problems, and how we can solve them.

Your Parent's Internet - How to Mitigate Misinformation

Jul 31, 2020 by Lane Wagner

The age of information is not what we all hoped it would be. We successfully digitized the majority of human knowledge, and we even made it freely accessible to most. Now the problem is different, we have too much information. Answers to most questions can be found in thousands of distinct places online, and the new problem is “whos information can we trust?”

Quantum Programming 101: Backend Monitor

May 12, 2020 by

Introduction 🔗 In a previous tutorial we showed how you can get basic information on all quantum devices using backend_overview().

Quantum Programming 101: Superdense Coding Tutorial

Apr 20, 2020 by

What is Superdense coding? 🔗 Superdense coding is a quantum communications protocol that allows a user to send 2 classical bits by sending only 1 qubit.