The Boot.dev Beat. August 2025
We ran the biggest hackathon I’ve ever been a part of (500+ participants!) and saw some incredible projects come out of it. Thanks to everyone that participated, I’m excited for the next one!
Gratefully, Lane
Patch notes
1. 2025 Hackathon Winners
If you want to see the full breakdown, check out the Hackathon Winners post, but here are some of the highlights:
Top 3 Winners in the Amateur Category:
Top 3 Winners in the Pro Category:
2. Listen to/Talk to Boots
You can now listen to Boots’ messages using the “speaker” icon next to his responses in the chat. You can also record voice messages and they’ll be transcribed live if you get tired of typing!


3. Updated Migrations Chapter in SQL Course
Our SQL course’s migrations chapter was a bit wonky and didn’t flow well, so we’ve updated the whole thing to be more clear and to go through both up and down migrations in a more logical way.
4. New Chest Icons
Our artist just finished up a brand new set of custom chest icons! We love them!

5. Miscellaneous improvements
- Fixed issue where confirm modals couldn’t be accepted with the enter key
- More flexible backend scaling for our APIs (most users wouldn’t care, but you might)
What is yet to come
- A new RAG course
- A groundbreaking new feature… that is totally secret for now
- Walkthrough of Prime’s HTTP protocol course on YouTube
- Walkthrough of the new AI Agent course on YouTube
Related Articles
2025 Hackathon
Jul 25, 2025 by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
The 2025 Boot.dev Hackathon has been completed! We had an amazing turnout this year, with over 500 participants across two categories: Amateur and Pro. The projects were incredible, and the competition was fierce.
The Boot.dev Beat. July 2025
Jul 09, 2025 by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
This month we were heads down building a lot of background stuff for big releases that are coming up - but we still did manage to get a few new features out the door!
The Boot.dev Beat. June 2025
Jun 10, 2025 by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
We’ve capitulated into the vibe coding era? Well… not really. But it’s cool to understand how AI agents like Cursor and Claude Code work under the hood.
The Boot.dev Beat. May 2025
May 11, 2025 by Lane Wagner - Boot.dev co-founder and backend engineer
Our biggest content release ever just dropped: the complete backend learning path, but now in Python and TypeScript! This is a massive update that we’ve been working on for a year, I hope you enjoy it!