Backend Banter

Boot.dev
  • 5.0 (21)
  • TECHNOLOGY
  • UPDATED WEEKLY
Backend Banter

The only podcast dedicated to backend development, technologies, and careers. Lane Wagner, the founder of Boot.dev, interviews successful backend engineers to get their takes on various trends, technologies, and career tips for new backend developers. Golang, Python, JavaScript, and Rust are the programming languages most commonly discussed, but speakers dabble in all sorts.

  1. SEP 2

    #069 - Season Finale: The Boot.dev Origin Story w/ Allan

    Today, we bring you the final episode of the first season of Backend Banter! It’s a wrap up for now. With 69 episodes behind us, we want to tell you the story of Boot Dev and how far we’ve come from our beginnings, and for that, we bring Allan Lires, the first official employee and the second person to work on our platform! We’re going to cover our entire timeline, achievements, hardships, how Lane and Allan were able to go all-in on building Boot Dev and our visions and plans for the future. Learn back-end development - https://boot.dev Listen on your favorite podcast player: https://www.backendbanter.fm Allan's X/Twitter: https://x.com/AllanLires Boot.Dev Discord: https://discord.com/invite/EEkFwbv Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 00:01 Last episode of Season 1 of Backend Banter 01:45 Boot.dev Story and what this episode will be about 02:26 How and when Allan was hired to work at Boot.dev 05:33 Timeline on Boot.dev 08:53 Guessing game 10:34 The Rebranding Process 12:43 Going Full-time 14:56 What was the curriculum in the beginning? 18:38 What was the original vision for Boot.dev 19:17 Being honest about how long it'll take you to learn to code 22:48 Setting expectations for difficulty 29:55 On learning the fundamentals 34:42 The Long Term vision of Boot.dev 41:30 Old gamification features and why we changed them 50:26 The Track is Never Complete 55:01 We cover a lot of the basics that traditional colleges don't cover 01:00:06 Why do we want to remove JavaScript from the learning course 01:06:12 Million Lessons Completed in a single month 01:08:28 You got to be comfortable being uncomfortable 01:13:25 Where to find Allan

    1h 15m

  2. AUG 26

    #068 - Should you trust tech influencers? feat. Charles The III

    Today we welcome Chuck Carpenter aka Charles The 3rd, co-host at Whiskey Web and Whatnot. As two content creators in the tech scene, we discuss if and how celebrity developers and tech influencers are a good thing for the community, how we should be careful when choosing technologies based on influencers’ opinions, why so many people nowadays want to speedrun their whole career and how that could be self-sabotage, and a lot more! Learn back-end development - https://boot.dev Listen on your favorite podcast player: https://www.backendbanter.fm Whiskey Web and Whatnot: https://whiskey.fm/ Charles' X/Twitter: https://x.com/charleswthe3rd Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:27 Does Charles listen to his own podcast episodes? 03:33 Are celebrity developers a good thing? 09:11 Podcasts are usually centered around a business 10:06 We are essentially entertainers 14:04 Tech choices being influenced by creators 17:37 Why ThePrimeagen stood out from other tech influencers 20:26 Career speedrunning 23:44 The biggest miss when starting something 24:51 What is wrong with Full-Stack application frameworks? 29:03 How Frankenstein is the Boot.dev web application stack 37:41 Rolling your own stuff vs using a provider 46:01 It's easy to screw up your architecture 50:53 What is Charles building with in 2024 and what is his preferred stack 56:39 Does it seem like people don't talk about security anymore? 01:00:30 Accessibility 01:02:02 The amount of people that are "kinda" interested in cybersecurity 01:11:03 Have some patience 01:11:37 Where to find Charles

    1h 13m

  3. AUG 19

    #067 - How to Be Better than 96.487% of Developers

    In today’s episode, we bring back Aaron Francis. If you haven’t watched our previous episode with him, he is a software developer, fellow content creator and co-founder of Try Hard Studios. In the past he’s been an accountant at a Big 4 but now he focuses on Laravel, web development and all things business and video. This episode will step away from the usual tech focused content and we’ll talk a bit more about the business side of things, how you have to balance entertainment and education when creating courses, Aaron’s High Performance SQLite course, building a personal brand through the discomfort of centering it around yourself, how good presentation matters and how proactiveness puts you miles ahead of the majority, so stay tuned! Learn back-end development - https://www.boot.dev Listen on your favorite podcast player: https://www.backendbanter.fm Aaron's X/Twitter: https://x.com/aarondfrancis Aaron's Website: https://aaronfrancis.com/ High Performance SQLite: https://highperformancesqlite.com/ Screencasting: https://screencasting.com/ Mostly Technical Podcast: https://mostlytechnical.com/ Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:32 Podcast listening going up when having a kid 02:25 Podcast about earning the first million 08:54 You have to choose the entertainment vs education levels 10:37 You have to shape your material to the platforms 16:40 Long hour videos vs 2 minute ones 20:16 Are the videos in the High Performance SQLite in linear order? 24:19 Figuring out the metrics 28:06 Building courses on other domains 31:46 Building brands is difficult 35:55 quick disclaimer 36:30 Personal brand vs company 37:57 Is this sellable? 40:23 Do you need an audience? 44:26 The strategy is simple but it is also hard to execute 49:31 The presentation matters a LOT 51:54 On being proactive 57:00 Where to find Aaron

    59 min

  4. AUG 12

    #066 - CSS Is The Hardest Programming Language

    In today’s episode, we bring Adam Argyle, a CSS Dev Rel at Google, content creator, co-host at CSS Podcast, Bad At CSS Podcast and host of GUI Challenges. He’s also the creator of a bunch of tools and utilities for the front-end. We’re going to touch on a lot of hot topics, regarding the difficulty and power of CSS, how programmers most of the time underestimate and dismiss it as something trivial when in reality it’s one of the hardest things to master in the programming world. We also go over AI, the barriers between designers and developers and a bunch of other topics. Learn back-end development - https://www.boot.dev Listen on your favorite podcast player: https://www.backendbanter.fm Adam's Website: https://nerdy.dev/ Adam's X/Twitter: https://x.com/argyleink Adam on Chrome For Developers: https://chromeextensionsdocs.appspot.com/authors/argyle/ The CSS Podcast: https://thecsspodcast.libsyn.com/ Bad at CSS Podcast: https://badatcss.com/ Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 00:51 CSS Wizard has entered the chat 02:37 HTML and CSS are not programming languages 07:44 There's a case for complex things using CSS 10:28 CSS is declarative by nature 17:58 Writing CSS is a pain 20:43 AI isn't a threat to CSS 21:19 Breaking barriers between designers and developers 26:33 Getting to an entry-level competency on the backend is a bit more difficult when compared to the frontend 31:37 Adam's backstory 33:40 Knowing everything 34:56 The majority of the complexity lives on the frontend a lot of the times 38:48 South Park Reality 39:49 BFF vs BOF (Backend for frontend vs Backend of the Frontend) 47:03 CSS is typed in the browser 51:28 Take on why are there so many mormons and ex-mormons in the webdev and tech influencer scene? 54:08 Where to find Adam

    55 min

  5. AUG 5

    #065 - I Quit Voice Coaching for Typescript feat. Matt Pocock

    In today’s episode, we welcome Matt Pocock, an educator, content creator and engineer who used to be a voice coach. Now, he teaches Typescript on his YouTube channel and is building Total Typescript, the most comprehensive TypeScript course available out there. We talk about his transition from a completely unrelated field into tech, the importance of great communication, TypeScript’s future, AI tooling and job hunts! A lot more else is covered in this video, so get cozy and tune in into this gem of an episode! Learn back-end development - https://boot.dev Listen on your favorite podcast player: https://www.backendbanter.fm Matt's X/Twitter: https://x.com/mattpocockuk Total Typescript: https://www.totaltypescript.com/ Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:15 What did Matt do before becoming a dev? 03:15 Career Transitions from a non-math background 04:02 What makes a good programmer? 06:46 Math knowledge > great communication? 08:55 On writing elaborate PR's 09:58 OCaml my Typescript 11:00 What is Typescript's Future? 14:21 Python type hinting and JSDoc 20:36 null vs undefined 25:02 interfaces vs type aliases 32:35 Does Matt have any rules of thumb when working with types? 37:14 How do you build nice encapsulated components with no external dependencies? 43:43 AI tooling integration 46:15 Will there be fewer jobs? 52:00 How often do you use classes? 54:29 Where to find Matt

    56 min

  6. JUL 29

    #064 - You’re doing networking wrong feat. Lawrence Lockhart

    In today’s episode, we welcome Lawrence Lockhart, a former hospitality manager turned full stack software developer. Apart from his tech job, he’s also a developer advocate, a teaching assistant at a coding bootcamp and a tech meetup leader, so you know he spends a lot of his time helping others build and transfer their existing skills into tech, being a powerful voice in the tech space for upcoming developers. Today we talk briefly about how he managed to switch from hospitality to tech, and how that wasn’t as easy as a lot of people online make it out to be, the importance of local and in-person jobs as opposed to starting off remote, how learning with purpose is essential if you want to make progress and advice for people starting out! Learn back-end development - https://boot.dev Listen on your favorite podcast player: https://www.backendbanter.fm Code Connector: https://codeconnector.io Lawrence's X/Twitter: https://x.com/LawrenceDCodes Lawrence's TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawrencedlockhart Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 00:44 When did Lawrence start to be more involved in the online tech communities? 02:23 How did Lawrence meet James Q Quick 04:42 Transition from a Blue Collar job into Tech 10:59 6 months is not the standard anymore to get in the industry 13:44 The Timeline Discussion 15:56 Kelsey Hightower 18:09 Has Lawrence worked as a dev in non-tech companies and where he works now 23:33 It's IMPORTANT to go for local market and in-person jobs first 24:27 How networking actually works 28:46 Learning with a purpose 36:43 You shouldn't be trying to minmax your career path 39:43 Advice to people that are unsure in their skills 43:51 How to approach interviews 49:31 You have to practice interviewing 54:48 Learn the thing or get out 58:33 Disagree and commit 01:01:45 Where to find Lawrence

    1h 4m

  7. JUL 22

    #063 - I was fired for using HTMX

    In today’s episode, we bring Spiro Floropoulos, a senior developer and architect with over 20 years of experience. This episode is an unusual one, as Spiro recently got laid off due to a bizarre chain of events that involved HTMX, overworking, and technical debt. But we’ll learn from this story, as we want to shed some light on how situations that Spiro described could be avoided, namely how the tech industry is obsessing over developer experience and why that’s detrimental, why abstractions should be teaching you the technology as opposed to just doing the work for you, why you should be able to train your junior devs and much more! Learn back-end development - https://boot.dev Listen on your favorite podcast player: https://www.backendbanter.fm Spiro's X/Twitter: https://x.com/spirodonfl Spiro's Website: https://spirofloropoulos.com/ Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 00:35 Why are we having this conversation 01:33 How was HTMX involved in this? 03:38 Spiro's background 05:58 Why are we focusing so much on developer experience? 13:38 The Tech Industry as a whole is headed down the wrong path 16:17 Abstractions teaching you about the underlying technology rather than hiding it 18:47 What are the long-term consequences of unresolved technical debt? 26:46 There's things you can't blame frameworks for 28:27 We have to slow down 30:46 What happened after the introduction of HTMX into the project? 40:26 Hiring juniors is great, but you should have the resources to train them 47:00 The Technical Debt 50:32 The more complex the feature became, the bigger the struggle with HTMX 53:42 The reasons why Spiro was let go 57:10 Instead of Agile we should treat our programmers like adults 57:31 HTMX was instant and testing ability was better 01:01:21 Is Spiro looking for work? 01:02:00 Where to find Spiro

    1h 3m

  8. JUL 15

    #062 - Declaring War Against the Frontend feat. Sam Selikoff

    In today’s episode, we go to war with Sam Selikoff, co-host of the Frontend First podcast, and specialist on everything Frontend related. We have an amazing conversation where we discuss Sam’s journey, as he also did some backend work in the past, we talk about abstractions, what JavaScript is doing differently from other languages and frameworks, why the frontend should be driving the backend and not the other way around, and finish it off with a discussion about RSCs (React Server Components). Learn back-end development - https://www.boot.dev Listen on your favorite podcast player: https://www.backendbanter.fm Frontend First: https://frontendfirst.fm/ Sam's X/Twitter: https://x.com/samselikoff Sam's Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/samselikoff Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 00:51 Who is Sam Selikoff 02:12 Abstractions - Should you go a level deeper? 06:37 What was Sam's talk about 10:51 What is JavaScript doing differently? 19:10 Do you want the frameworks to push more features out of the box for backend work? 24:04 Strong opinions on a library level 30:29 Shipping more standardized interfaces 37:06 The frontend should be driving everything in the backend 39:12 Your types should flow from the database to the frontend, but not the product decisions 46:53 React Server Components 58:49 Where to find Sam

    59 min
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5
out of 5
21 Ratings

About

The only podcast dedicated to backend development, technologies, and careers. Lane Wagner, the founder of Boot.dev, interviews successful backend engineers to get their takes on various trends, technologies, and career tips for new backend developers. Golang, Python, JavaScript, and Rust are the programming languages most commonly discussed, but speakers dabble in all sorts.

Information

  • Creator
    Boot.dev
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2024
  • Episodes
    70
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Boot.dev
  • Show Website
    Backend Banter

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