The Boot.dev Beat. October 2024

The “learn computer science basics” section of the backend developer learning path is now complete! We have no big plans to make serious modifications (tbh I always say this though, so idk). To be clear, that’s the first half of the track complete - the first 13 courses up to the personal project.

Elatedly, Lane

Patch notes

1. New Course: Learn Memory Management

TJ DeVries spent nine months perfecting this incredible course on memory management in C. It will teach your how to manually manage memory in C and you’ll even build your own garbage collector from scratch.

2. Functional Programming Course Walkthrough

If you’ve ever hung out on our Discord server, you’ll know that the Functional Programming course is one of the larger difficulty spikes on the platform. As such, we’ve created a free 2+ hour walkthrough of the course in collaboration with Travvy. Check it out

3. HTTP Servers and Blog Aggregator Updates

The old HTTP Servers course was before the SQL section, and the blog aggregator was after the SQL section. We’ve made drastic updates to those courses and moved their positions a bit within the track. The takeaways are that, aside from being new and improved overall:

• The HTTP Servers course now uses a PostgreSQL database instead of flat files
• The Blog Aggregator course is now a CLI tool, which makes using and testing it way easier and more fun
• Both now have auto-reset functionality, so no more failed submissions due to a bad database state

4. As of Today, 10,185 Issue Tickets Closed

You know that little “report issue” button on each lesson? We take those reports very seriously. Over Boot.dev’s lifespan, we’ve closed 10,185 of those tickets (which is actually fewer than the total number or reports because we batch all the reports on a given lesson into a single ticket). Anyhow, thanks so much for all the feedback. We’re always listening, and we spend as much time updating existing content as we do creating new content.

There are only 64 tickets open as I type this - we close hundreds per week.

5. Miscellaneous improvements

• A new privacy toggle to keep your achievements and profile private if you choose (tbh you probably shouldn’t but you know, whatever)
• Removed confusing “positional args” options from the Bootdev CLI
• Audio player UI enhancements
• Some new boss fight mechanics (you’ll see soon…)
• Collapsible sections in the lesson instructions
• New fancy button (and more new fancy buttons coming)

What is yet to come

• A big update to streaks - they will now be daily instead of weekly, and frozen flames will only protect you for 3 days instead of 7
• Spellbooks (Grimoires? Tomes? idk). We’re aiming to solve several hugely requested features in one fell swoop. Bookmarks, note taking, and cheat sheets all wrapped up into one UI feature. Stay tuned.
• A big update to the data structures course
• New Track Option: The second half of the backend development track in TypeScript

New YouTube Explainer Videos

We publish all of our explainer videos on our YouTube channel for free! Subscribe so you don’t miss any:

• What are Structs in C?
• What are Enums in Python?
• What are Closures?
• What are Pure Functions?