Boot.dev Blog - Pg. 7

Awww, do I Really Need to Learn X to Get a Job as a Developer?
Jun 24, 2023 by Lane Wagner
A developer’s life is a never-ending saga of learning new things. It’s like you’re playing Diablo where every new Jira ticket can feel like the next mini boss to slay. Exciting? Absolutely. Scary? Sure. Especially at first. Why do we resist learning new things? 🔗 We’re creatures of comfort. We like what we know, and the unknown can be as intimidating as a null dereference in prod. But here’s the deal: the software development industry moves fast and there’s a near-infinite amount of stuff to learn.
Boot.dev Team Handbook
Jun 12, 2023 by Lane Wagner
Our goal: To make the best place to learn to code. The most effective, the most fun, and the most thorough. Now, let’s talk about how to succeed with your work at Boot.dev. How we work 🔗 We work remotely and asynchronously We care about how much and how well stuff gets done, not how many hours are spent working We don’t just care about the work itself, we care more about the positive effects of the work We care about how responsive and helpful we are to each other, not how many or which hours we’re “online” Work when it’s most productive for you and your team.
Boots, a Wizard Bear that Codes
Jun 08, 2023 by Lane Wagner
Boots is the heart and soul of Boot.dev. Not only is he capable of helping you through any lesson on Boot.dev, but he’s a friendly wizard bear with a charming personality. Some things you should know about Boots: He is available via a ChatGPT-like interface on every lesson in Boot.dev He has been pre-prompted with every lesson’s explanation, challenge, and solution, so he’s really good at helping when you’re stuck He’s been instructed to use the Socratic method to help you learn, which means he’ll ask you questions to help you learn rather than give you the answer He uses GPT-4o He’s a bear He’s a wizard Below we’ve allowed Boots to introduce himself in his own words:
The Boot.dev Beat. June 2023
May 31, 2023 by Lane Wagner
May was a historic month for Boot.dev. We added more students to the backend learning path than we ever have in a single month before, and we’re doing everything we can to build and release new, better courses at a faster clip. Thanks for hanging out and learning with us. All the best, Lane Patch notes 🔗 BackendBanter.fm Podcast 🔗 Backend Banter is our brand new podcast about backend technologies and careers!
Work at Boot.dev
May 31, 2023 by Lane Wagner
We’re building the smartest way to master backend development by tackling the hardest problem with e-learning: boredom. We’re a small team of developers who love to make the process of learning as fun and hands-on as it can be. If you’re curious about what its like to work with us, check out our public handbook. Open positions 🔗 No positions at this time! Keep an eye out for future postings!
Format on Save in Go with VS Code [2023]
May 26, 2023 by Lane Wagner
Go has hard opinions about how you should style and format your code. Setting up your VS Code environment to enforce the standard linting and formatting rules can save you a ton of time. I don’t like to think about code styling. I like to type a bunch of code with incorrect spacing and press (ctrl+s) or (cmd+s) to save my code and auto-format it. What you’ll need 🔗 Make sure you have the latest version of Go installed on your machine (as of the time of writing, 1.
Programming types and (incorrect) mindsets
May 08, 2023 by Lane Wagner
DHH, the creator of Ruby on Rails, Hey, Basecamp, and a few other things, recently wrote an article titled “Programming types and mindsets”, and I just have to chime in on this one. I thought we’d moved past this by now. A decade or so ago, it seemed like there was healthy banter about the pros and cons of dynamically typed vs statically typed languages, and genuinely interesting discussions about the tradeoffs took place.
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. But for some folks, Codecademy just doesn’t work out, for whatever reason.
The Boot.dev Beat. May 2023
May 03, 2023 by Lane Wagner
We hit some amazing milestones in April. We now have over 40,000 registered students and over 500,000 lessons completed on the platform! I hope your learnings are going well, and that everything we’re building is helping you, even if it’s in a small way. All the best, Lane Patch notes 🔗 1. New Roles 🔗 We’ve created new icons to represent the roles that you unlock by completing courses and projects.
The 28 Best Places to Learn Python Online
Apr 28, 2023 by Natalie Schooner
For anyone who wants to learn Python online, it can be a bit overwhelming. When I Googled it, I came up with over 200 million hits. The frustrating thing is that despite having a ton of options, very few of them fit your needs. When I was a beginner who wanted to learn Python, I wanted: An interactive platform that didn’t assume prior knowledge that would give me something at the end that I could put on a portfolio didn’t cost too much where I could learn on my own time and had some kind of community element There were very few places that met all my criteria.