Backend Banter

Today, we bring back a dear guest and friend of the podcast, ThePrimeagen! Now Ex-Netflix engineer who turned his full focus to content creation surrounding software engineering and tech. In today's episode, we talk about his new Git course on boot.dev, where he shares motivations on why he decided to write a course on Git, how he incorporates it into his workflow and shares some hot takes regarding today's tech education landscape, his opinion on bootcamps, colleges, and what his ideal way of teaching computer science is. To finish off, he shares some of his exciting new ventures, namely a coffee shop and a Doom game which you can play through twitch chat! Learn back-end development - https://boot.dev Listen on your favorite podcast player: https://www.backendbanter.fm ThePrimeagen's Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/theprimeagen ThePrimeagen's other Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@ThePrimeTimeagen ThePrimeagen's Twitter: https://x.com/ThePrimeagen Terminal Coffee Shop: https://www.terminal.shop/ Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction 00:27 Why teach about Git? 02:55 Was Prime taught Git? 04:50 add files individually or git add . 07:22 Hot take about git in school 10:27 What should you learn in school in the first place? 11:34 Where did school come from? 16:42 You can't become a software engineer in 3 months 19:45 Contents of Part 1 and what will Part 2 of the Git course be about 22:58 Rebase vs Merge and Prime's current workflow 24:22 Why you shouldn't merge 29:10 A lot of the times, people just don't know the tools 32:29 The advantage of rebase 34:03 Rewriting history criticism 36:30 Prime's terminal coffee shop 44:22 Doom in the terminal? 54:08 Is the bandwidth the problem with the Doom game? 55:27 Ideas for the controls for Doom 58:57 Where to find Prime

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 background 02:24 Why did NeetCode start a YouTube Channel? 03:40 People don't talk about where they mess up at these big companies 04:47 Portray yourself in the best possible light at interviews 07:37 Why LeetCode? 08:44 Why Grinding LeetCode is not the smartest choice 11:31 Why LeetCode is still important if your goal is a FAANG-level company 14:47 What would be the approach for someone with CS-degree knowledge that wants to get into Google in 2024/2025 17:26 How to know if you're having trouble getting or passing interviews? 19:01 You can put projects on a resume, not LeetCode solutions 21:47 Tutorial Hell 24:47 You have to be able to prove your knowledge, just putting it on the resume isn't enough 29:20 You don't have to do content creation to get a developer job 30:29 Social Media works well for networking 33:03 NeetCode philosophy 37:57 Monetizing education content 42:17 How to level up the product experience 44:04 Amazon vs Google's culture 46:24 As usual, managers don't know what they're doing a lot of the time 49:30 Managers at these companies should be technical 51:17 Difference between Engineers and other Tech Roles 55:40 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 Crickett 01:13 What is a Software Architect 03:04 People vs Technical Leadership 03:53 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" companies 13:58 Juggling off-topic 14:32 What are the Coding Challenges? 19:03 Remote work and downtime 22:56 The wrong culture might spoil the remote environment and people care less about the work 27:05 Anonymity turns people into assholes 29:58 Why did we have a phone call when this could've been an e-mail? 33:42 Doing LeetCode vs Building Projects 36:54 Most of the time you'll be using already existing solutions 40:05 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 framework 51:30 Why just switching to a "faster" language isn't enough 53:48 Go vs Rust performance comparison 54:44 Learning how to write performant code is more important than the programming language itself 55:25 The importance of benchmarking 58:33 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 Background 01:37 How Leandro got involved with OCaml 02:50 What the heck is Idris??? 07:03 When Leandro started working with OCaml 11:34 ReasonML 15:48 The Riot Library and OCaml issues 18:00 Type Inference in OCaml 23:10 What allowed Riot to move so fast 24:17 The ecosystem of a language 28:14 Is Riot a Concurrency Library or a Web Framework? 31:01 Goroutines refresher 33:02 How Riot implements the actor-model 38:34 Cooperative Scheduling vs Preemptive Scheduling 41:30 How to fix routine blocking 43:14 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

Today, we bring a special "Whiskey, Web and Whatnot" edition to our podcast, where we welcome Travis Wagner and Robbie The Wagner, to talk about controversial takes regarding tech CEOs, their experiences in the field, the impact of AI and other personal preferences towards technologies Learn back-end development - https://boot.dev Listen on your favorite podcast player: https://www.backendbanter.fm Whiskey, Web and Whatnot podcast: https://whiskey.fm/Robbie's Twitter: https://twitter.com/RobbieTheWagnerTravis's Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/techsavvytravvy Travis's Twitter: https://twitter.com/techsavvytravvy Timestamps: 01:22 Whiskey, Web and Whatnot 01:52 Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg, which Tech CEO of 2024 is your favorite? 03:28 Robbie's Background 04:42 Travis's background 06:23 Big company or small company? 10:07 Tenures, incentives and current market 12:33 Who would you pick for your team, Steve Ballmer or Sundar Pichai 13:41 AWS or GCP? 16:25 DevOps is not a real job 20:16 Be a DevRel or a Scrum Master? 23:38 What's the difference between DevRel and Dev Advocate? 24:56 AI or VR, which is more impactful on a developer's day-to-day? 31:53 Which Big Tech Company sucks the least? 36:21 Bigger Salary but Less Equity or Less Salary but More Equity? 41:19 Is Blockchain Gone Yet? 50:52 CS Degree or Being an Open Source Maintainer on a successful project? 55:10 Remote or On-site? 01:03:19 Where to find Robbie 01:03:43 Where to find Travis

In today's episode, we bring Thorsten Ball, author of "Writing An Interpreter In Go" and "Writing A Compiler In Go". In this talk, we discuss the different clashes and responsibilities between Product and Engineering teams, reignite the topic of working with technical managers, explain why cookie banners are dumb, and on a more interpersonal note, discuss how important coolness is in education, explain why a lot of the times, highly talented people just don't know how to work and also dabble into the ideas of fulfillment, responsibility and reliability. Thorsten's Twitter: https://twitter.com/thorstenball Register Spill: https://registerspill.thorstenball.com/ Thorsten's Books: https://thorstenball.com/books/

In this episode, we bring Daniel Roe, the Lead Maintainer of Nuxt.js, an open source framework that makes web development intuitive and powerful. Today, he shares his journey into the framework and sheds some light on intriguing questions surrounding its development and usage. Today's talk ranges from the origins of Nuxt to its unique features and practical tips for developers, deliberate naming, comparison with Next.js and technical and detailed discussion regarding performance optimization and project structuring. Learn back-end development - https://boot.dev Listen on your favorite podcast player: https://www.backendbanter.fm Daniel's Twitter: https://x.com/danielcroe Daniel's Website: https://roe.dev/ Nuxt Framework: https://nuxt.com

In today's episode, we bring back Teej DeVries, the first guest ever on our podcast! Today we are discussing Teej's new course on Boot.dev on Memory Management. In this talk, we discuss the importance of memory, why Go is a C-programmer minded language, garbage collectors, among other technical topics. We also talk about why understanding the fundamentals in crucial in helping you increase your learning ability, how different it is hiring juniors and seniors and why being curious gives you the advantage over everyone else. Learn back-end development - https://boot.dev Listen on your favorite podcast player: https://www.backendbanter.fm Teej's Twitter: https://twitter.com/teej_dv Teej's Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/tjdevries

In this episode, Lane chats with Lewis Menelaws, a Full-Stack developer and entrepreneur. Today he takes us through his coding journey and insights as a developer influencer. From his early days coding Roblox games, tech stacks, and the challenges of freelancing, to his shift into content creation and thoughts on the current programming meta. Learn back-end development - https://boot.dev Listen on your favorite podcast player: https://www.backendbanter.fm Lewis's Twitter: https://twitter.com/LewisMenelaws Lewis's Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/CodingwithLewis

In this episode, Lane talks to Alex DeBrie, author of the DynamoDB book. Today's talk covers various aspects such as DynamoDB's comparison with Amazon S3, its benefits, use cases, constraints, and cost considerations, while also covering other AWS and Google Cloud services. Alex also shares his insights into his journey of writing the book on DynamoDB and touches on topics like access patterns, secondary indexes, and billing modes. Alex also shares his professional experiences, including consulting vs freelancing, thoughts of entrepreneurial aspirations, and gives helpful advice for those that are considering pursuing a similar career. Learn back-end development - https://boot.dev Listen on your favorite podcast player: https://www.backendbanter.fm Alex's Twitter: https://twitter.com/alexbdebrie Alex's Website: https://www.alexdebrie.com

In this episode, Lane talks to Dax Raad, a well rounded engineer that is currently a developer for SST, a framework that helps people build Full-Stack applications on AWS with ease. Today, they talk about personal opinions on industry practices, scale, financial decisions, infrastructure mistakes, reflections on long-term company commitments and many more! Learn back-end development - https://boot.dev Listen on your favorite podcast player: https://www.backendbanter.fm Dax's Twitter: https://twitter.com/thdxr

Lane chats with Dev Agrawal— content creator & Developer Advocate at Clerk! Tune in as they discuss DevRel, authentication vs. authorization, JWT, and so much more in this episode. Learn back-end development - https://boot.dev Listen on your favorite podcast player: https://www.backendbanter.fm Dev's Twitter: https://twitter.com/devagrawal09 Dev's Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@devagr

Lane chats with Matt Holt-- a renowned figure in backend engineering and the creator of Caddy, a leading platform for serving sites and apps written in Go. In this episode, they discuss the origins of Caddy, its unique features, and Matt's journey in Go programming and web development. Learn back-end development - https://boot.dev Listen on your favorite podcast player: https://www.backendbanter.fm Matt Holt Twitter: https://x.com/mholt6?s=20 Caddy Web Server Twitter: https://x.com/caddyserver?s=20

Lane chats with BadCop-- a senior Bash engineer, Twitch streamer and the mastermind behind their online presence. From the origins of 'BadCop' to the recent emergence of 'BashCop,' they explore scripting languages, focusing on Bash, shells, terminals and more. Follow the conversation in this enlightening episode, unraveling the intricacies of online identity and the technical landscape of Unix shells! Learn back-end development - https://boot.dev Listen on your favorite podcast player: https://www.backendbanter.com BadCop Twitter: twitter.com/badcop_ BadCop Twitch: twitch.tv/badcop_

Lane chats with Richard Feldman, creator of the Roc programming language, about why he decided to create it. They discuss object oriented programming and whether it did irreparable damage to the industry - or not. Follow along as they talk about all of that and functional programming too! Learn back-end development - https://boot.dev Listen on your favorite podcast player: https://www.backendbanter.com Richard Feldmans Twitter: twitter.com/rtfeldman Roc Programming Language: https://www.roc-lang.org/ Software Unscripted can be found on any podcast platform!