Show Notes
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
More from Backend Banter
Today we welcome YK Sugi—engineer, educator, and the mind behind CSS Dojo—for the final episode of season two.
In this episode, we sit down with Quincy Larson, founder of Free Code Camp, to explore his incredible path from high school dropout to influential tech educator. Quincy shares his unconventional journey — from living in his car and working fast food jobs to building one of the most impactful coding education platforms in the world.
Today we welcome Mitchell Hashimoto, co-founder of HashiCorp and creator of Ghostty, a new terminal emulator built in Zig. In this episode, Mitchell shares the story behind Ghostty, how his curiosity about terminals evolved into a full-fledged project, and why Zig became his language of choice.
Today we welcome Malte Ubl, CTO of Vercel, to discuss the evolution of frontend development and the role of AI in shaping modern engineering workflows. Malte dives into V0, Vercel's innovative tool for generating frontend code using AI, and explains how it empowers developers—especially backend engineers—to build full-stack applications. We also explore the concept of verticalization in engineering roles, the challenges of balancing innovation with infrastructure, and how AI is redefining productivity in tech.
Today we welcome Madison Kana—a self-taught dev who defied the traditional path. From dropping out and navigating a world of homeschooling to launching the Code Book Club, Madison transformed her unconventional journey into a thriving community of coders. In this episode, she shares how bypassing the typical education route fueled her passion, the real challenges of learning on your own, and the power of mentorship in building a dynamic tech career. If you’re ready to break the mold and carve your own path in software development. Learn back-end development - https://www.boot.dev Listen on your favorite podcast player: https://www.backendbanter.fm Madison's X: https://x.com/Madisonkanna Website: https://madisonkanna.com/ Learn out loud: learn0utloud.com Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro 00:30 - Where did it all start? 01:40 - Dropping out 08:42 - How Madison started learning code 22:00 - Team leading 30:30 - Code Book Club 38:50 - Learn out loud 46:20 - AI talk 54:18 - Book recommendations 56:05 - Outro Like & subscribe for the algo if you enjoyed the video!