Backend Banter Boot.dev

In today's episode, we welcome Low Level Learning, a fellow programmer and content creator. With over 500k subscribers and his own course where he teaches low level programming topics, he came on the podcast to talk about what he knows most: C, low level concepts, AI, as well as share some of his own developer experiences and preferences that he garnered over the years.



Learn back-end development - https://boot.dev

Listen on your favorite podcast player: https://www.backendbanter.fm



Low Level Learning’s Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/LowLevelTweets

Low Level Learning's Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/lowlevellearning

Low Level Learning's Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/LowLevelLearning

Low Level Academy: https://lowlevel.academy/



Timestmaps:

00:47 Who is Low Level Learning?

01:34 C is a High Level Language

02:47 Is C lower level than Rust or Zig?

04:33 Front-end vs Back-end, which is harder?

06:34 The Boot.dev stack

07:11 The Low Level Academy stack

07:59 Low Level Academy

09:56 Project-based learning

12:18 sqlc

14:44 How do you debug C?

17:26 Fuzzing Harness vs Unit Testing

22:28 Favorite Feature of C

23:45 If you could change one thing in C, what would it be?

26:53 Where do C programmers work?

29:16 The White House and Garbage Collectors

31:19 What is a side-channel attack?

33:56 Power side-channel attack

35:41 Side-channel attack on boot.dev

37:08 What tooling does Low Level Learning use to write C?

43:59 How do you deal with the lack of a package manager?

48:12 Opinion on statically compiled and dynamic libraries

50:36 Where to find Low Level Learning

In today’s episode, we welcome Natalie Pistunovich, host of the Go Time podcast, OpenAI Ambassador and Google Developer Expert for Go. She advises companies on how to make the most of AI and adopt it properly and also teaches the Cloud and Infrastructure course for B.Sc. students at the HTW Berlin.

In this episode, we talk all about AI driven development and how is Go one of the best languages suited for code generation, the future of LLM’s and how can we boost the average developer’s job with AI, creating custom GPT’s, changes in the area of AI Chips, and a lot of other fascinating topics.



Learn back-end development - https://boot.dev

Listen on your favorite podcast player: https://www.backendbanter.fm

Natalie's Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/nataliepis



Timestamps:



00:47 Who is Low Level Learning?

01:34 C is a High Level Language

02:47 Is C lower level than Rust or Zig?

04:33 Front-end vs Back-end, which is harder?

06:34 The Boot.dev stack

07:11 The Low Level Academy stack

07:59 Low Level Academy

09:56 Project-based learning

12:18 sqlc

14:44 How do you debug C?

17:26 Fuzzing Harness vs Unit Testing

22:28 Favorite Feature of C

23:45 If you could change one thing in C, what would it be?

26:53 Where do C programmers work?

29:16 The White House and Garbage Collectors

31:19 What is a side-channel attack?

33:56 Power side-channel attack

35:41 Side-channel attack on boot.dev

37:08 What tooling does Low Level Learning use to write C?

43:59 How do you deal with the lack of a package manager?

48:12 Opinion on statically compiled and dynamic libraries

50:36 Where to find Low Level Learning

In today’s episode, we bring fellow developer and tech content creator NeetCode, to talk about his obstacles and observations on his path in becoming a FAANG engineer, where he shares his struggles and how he started both his tech career and content creation journeys.

Among a variety of other topics, NeetCode shares his advice for anyone that’s open to receiving it, and explains the pros and cons of grinding LeetCode, if it is even worth doing it or not, while also dabbling into why networking is somewhat important and highlights the importance of standing out in today’s job market environment.



Learn back-end development - https://boot.dev

Listen on your favorite podcast player: https://www.backendbanter.fm

Neetcode's Website: https://neetcode.io/

Neetcode's Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/neetcode

Neetcode's Twitter: https://twitter.com/neetcode1

Neetcode's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/navdeep-singh-3aaa14161/



Timestamps:

00:46 Who is NeetCode and a bit of his background02:24 Why did NeetCode start a YouTube Channel?03:40 People don't talk about where they mess up at these big companies04:47 Portray yourself in the best possible light at interviews07:37 Why LeetCode?08:44 Why Grinding LeetCode is not the smartest choice11:31 Why LeetCode is still important if your goal is a FAANG-level company14:47 What would be the approach for someone with CS-degree knowledge that wants to get into Google in 2024/202517:26 How to know if you're having trouble getting or passing interviews?19:01 You can put projects on a resume, not LeetCode solutions21:47 Tutorial Hell24:47 You have to be able to prove your knowledge, just putting it on the resume isn't enough29:20 You don't have to do content creation to get a developer job30:29 Social Media works well for networking33:03 NeetCode philosophy37:57 Monetizing education content42:17 How to level up the product experience44:04 Amazon vs Google's culture46:24 As usual, managers don't know what they're doing a lot of the time49:30 Managers at these companies should be technical51:17 Difference between Engineers and other Tech Roles55:40 Where to find NeetCode

In today’s episode, we welcome John Crickett, veteran software engineer, having worked at Staff, VP, and C-Suite positions over the years, and now focusing on helping thousands of engineers worldwide, through his coding challenges that have you building real applications, as well as helping with the soft skills through his articles and posts about software development.

Today we cover a LOT of ground where we explain exactly what a Software Architect is, discuss different leadership types, advice to get a software job, remote work, unpopular opinions on programming languages, performance and scale, and a couple other things, so stay tuned because this episode is a true fountain of knowledge.



Learn back-end development - https://boot.dev

Listen on your favorite podcast player: https://www.backendbanter.fm

John Crickett's Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/johncrickett

John Crickett's Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johncrickett/

Coding Challenges: https://codingchallenges.fyi/

Coding Challenges on Substack: https://codingchallenges.substack.com/

Research mentioned at 27:33 : https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232514133_Effect_of_self-differentiation_and_anonymity_in_group_on_deindividuation

More on the topic of Deindividuation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deindividuation#Major_empirical_discoveries



Timestamps:

00:12 Who is John Crickett01:13 What is a Software Architect03:04 People vs Technical Leadership03:53 What kind of decisions does a software architect make?04:43 Is there a lot of "Thought Leadership" involved?05:23 Do you prefer Technical or People leadership?07:47 How did John start his coding career?11:39 Most people don't start working at "sexy" companies13:58 Juggling off-topic14:32 What are the Coding Challenges?19:03 Remote work and downtime22:56 The wrong culture might spoil the remote environment and people care less about the work27:05 Anonymity turns people into assholes29:58 Why did we have a phone call when this could've been an e-mail?33:42 Doing LeetCode vs Building Projects36:54 Most of the time you'll be using already existing solutions40:05 Is there too much abstraction nowadays?41:56 Using the Command Line is cool again!43:44 When talking about scale, what matters most is the architecture, not the language or framework51:30 Why just switching to a "faster" language isn't enough53:48 Go vs Rust performance comparison54:44 Learning how to write performant code is more important than the programming language itself55:25 The importance of benchmarking58:33 Where to find John

In today’s episode, we bring Leandro Ostera, a seasoned software engineer, who’s currently leading the OCaml build system team, with the mission of making OCaml SaaS ready!

Join us as this episode is packed with a variety of topics, where we mainly focus on the OCaml ecosystem, compare it to other languages and frameworks, but also dabble into very obscure topics such as Idris (hint: it’s a programming language), and explore concepts such as routine blocking, scheduling, types, and other issues.



Learn back-end development - https://boot.dev

Listen on your favorite podcast player: https://www.backendbanter.fm

Check out Riot: https://riot.ml/

Leandro's Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/leostera

Leandro's Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/leostera



Timestamps:

00:28 Leandro's Background01:37 How Leandro got involved with OCaml02:50 What the heck is Idris???07:03 When Leandro started working with OCaml11:34 ReasonML15:48 The Riot Library and OCaml issues18:00 Type Inference in OCaml23:10 What allowed Riot to move so fast24:17 The ecosystem of a language28:14 Is Riot a Concurrency Library or a Web Framework?31:01 Goroutines refresher33:02 How Riot implements the actor-model38:34 Cooperative Scheduling vs Preemptive Scheduling41:30 How to fix routine blocking43:14 What has Leandro and other contributers shipped?46:25 How does Leandro manage his time to work on all of these projects?49:45 Where to find Leandro

Today, we're excited to have Bashbunni join us, a software developer and fellow tech content creator currently rocking it as a DevRel at Charm, whose purpose is all about glamming up the CLI experience.

In this episode, we cover a lot of ground, from diving into Charm's cool libraries and their real-world applications to chatting about the self-taught programming journey. We also touch on TikTok and addictive social media use, content creation and its intricacies, and share some insights into the world of Golang.

Learn back-end development - https://boot.dev
Listen on your favorite podcast player: https://www.backendbanter.fm

Bashbunni's Twitter: https://twitter.com/sudobunni
Bashbunni's Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/bashbunni
Bashbunni's Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/bashbunni

Charm: https://charm.sh/
Charm's video that Bashbunni mentioned: https://charm.sh/blog/100k/

Timestamps:

00:36 When did Bashbunni start working with Go?
02:10 School during COVID and education nowadays
04:23 Is self-taught still a viable way to learn programming?
08:50 Discipline can be learned
10:04 Why it is much harder to focus nowadays?
11:08 TikTok and Addictive Social Media Use
14:31 What kind of media does BashBunni consume, if not short-form content
18:14 Is creating content for Charm a bit part of the job?
21:05 On Tech content creators being technical
24:41 Quality vs Quantity
25:31 What is Charm?
29:09 Why Golang is the best language for CLI Applications
32:52 US vs Canadian Accents
34:05 Melt - One of Charm's Libraries
36:24 Soft serve - Self hostable git server
37:39 VHS - Terminal GIFs as code
39:10 How many people are behind Charm?
39:17 How does Charm make money?
42:40 GUI's are bloated, Terminal is the GOAT
45:56 Bashbunni's beef with JavaScript
48:47 Where to find Bashbunni