Backend Banter Boot.dev

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

In this episode, we host Trash Puppy, with her amazing story of how she went from Nursing to becoming a Software Engineer. Today, we talk about her story, why she chose Golang, her exciting personal projects and her experiences and advice as a self-taught developer.

As Trash Puppy is accepting job offers at the moment, we also dove into the current job market and job hunting process, as it definitely isn't an easy one to navigate these days, while also touching up on her thoughts of the threats of AI.

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

Trash Puppy's Twitter: https://twitter.com/TrshPuppy
Trash Puppy's Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@trshpuppy
Trash Puppy's Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/trshpuppy
Trash Puppy's Github: https://github.com/TrshPuppy
Trash Puppy's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trshpuppy/

Timestamps:

00:31 How Trash Puppy went from a Nurse to a Software Engineer
05:06 Lane shares how his wife went from an X-Ray technician to Software Dev
07:00 When did Trash Puppy start learning to code?
08:24 Trash Puppy pivoted to Golang?
09:29 Was there anything else about the industry that motivated Trash Puppy to switch to WebDev?
10:38 NetPuppy
13:12 Coding in Cyber Security
18:10 Do you want to hire Trash Puppy?
18:27 Current Job Market and Job Hunting
22:51 You have a better chance applying to local jobs
25:25 Lack of experience in the field when searching for a job
29:26 Outlook on AI
30:15 Impact of not having a CS Degree
33:11 Building projects or studying up on foundations?
37:19 The learning happens during the struggle
41:47 What has been the hardest thing about learning Go so far?
45:27 What do you like the most about Go?
47:03 What's your least favorite part about Go?
48:20 Installing Go modules vs GOPATH
50:31 Where to find Trash Puppy

Today, we're thrilled to have Tommy Graves, co-founder of RWX, a company focusing on building tools that optimize build and test performance, reliability, and developer experience. In this episode, we're delving deep into the realm of CI/CD (Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment), with a special focus on Mint - their latest CI platform. We'll be exploring its unique features, how it differs from its competitors, caching, security, cost-efficiency in production pipelines.

Apart from that, we'll also discuss GitHub Actions along with it's biggest flaws and finally demystifying CI/CD, as it is not the big monster a lot of developers perceive it to be.

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

Mint: https://www.rwx.com/mint

Timestamps:

00:54 Who is Tommy Graves
05:14 What is Continuous Integration?
06:57 What is Mint trying to solve, that isn't solved by other CI/CD platforms
09:57 Better Semantic Output on a CI/CD platform
14:20 What's the benefit to the structure of semantic logging, apart from visualization
15:23 CI/CD course on Boot.dev
17:59 Does Mint make it cheaper for companies that have high CI/CD expenses?
19:12 Why don't other companies do caching the way Mint does?
25:49 There are security implications of using the same platform for both CI and CD
30:42 How smaller teams could benefit from Mint
33:15 Verifying changes to the deployment workflow with GitHub Actions and Mint
36:49 Is GitHub Actions dominating the space or is there still competition?
39:04 One of the biggest frustrations with GitHub Actions
42:03 Does Mint relate to the Unix philosophy?
48:07 How does configuring the CI/CD tools drive the philosophy of Mint
50:36 Just understand CI/CD, you won't need those courses dedicated to CI/CD platforms
53:45 CI/CD is not as esoteric as it sounds
58:48 Where to find Mint