December 2, 2024 • 58 mins
Ever wondered what it takes to create a course that truly makes an impact? In this episode, I sit down with Lane Wagner, the creator of Boot.dev, to dive deep into the philosophy and decisions behind one of the most comprehensive backend development platforms out there.
Lane shares his journey from a backend developer to an educator, revealing the challenges, insights, and strategies that helped Boot.dev stand out in a crowded market. Whether you're an aspiring course creator or an aspiring backend developer looking for inspiration, this behind-the-scenes look offers invaluable lessons on teaching backend development the right way.
Lane Wagner (guest):
Twitter - https://x.com/wagslane
Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/wagslane
Website - https://www.boot.dev
Boot.dev Metrics - https://blog.boot.dev/education/state-of-learning-to-code-2024
---------------------------------------------------
🔥 Webdev Career Help - https://calendly.com/donthedeveloper/coaching
🎮 Join Discord - https://discord.gg/TpQe2k8Ab3
❤️ Support What I Do - https://www.patreon.com/donthedeveloper
Disclaimer: Some product links are affiliate links which means if you buy something I'll receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.
===========================
WEBDEV COURSES I HIGHLY RECOMMEND:
🎓 Learn Frontend - Scrimba (20% off): https://scrimba.com/the-frontend-developer-career-path-c0j?via=donthedeveloper
🎓 Learn Backend - Boot.dev (25% off): https://boot.dev/?promo=DONTHEDEVELOPER - Get 25% off your first payment with code "DONTHEDEVELOPER"
🎓 Already Experienced? Level Up Here - Code Crafters (40% off): https://app.codecrafters.io/join?via=donthedeveloper
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Don Hansen (00:00):
Today we are going to dive into the world of
bootdev.
If you don't know and if youhaven't heard about them already
, bootdev is a pretty lengthyin-depth course that aims to
help aspiring backend devs tryto land that first position and
get them prepared.
Do a better job at preparingpeople than a lot of the full
(00:26):
stack courses, even coding bootcamps, that'll kind of just
touch on.
When they do dive into backend,it's more no JS express, no
opinionated framework, anythinglike that.
They don't really dive into alot of depth.
They prepare you to kind ofjust be an app developer, where
bootdev seems to dive a littlebit deeper and really build that
solid foundation.
So you know full transparency.
I partnered as an affiliate withthem.
(00:47):
So you know there might be somebias.
But I chose to partner withthem for a reason and I get to
bring on Lane again today tokind of dive into not only the
history of bootdev, because I'mkind of curious about that, but
also hopefully we can come outwith some advice for any
developers or content creatorsthat are trying to create a
course.
And you know, selfishly I havesome of my own questions that
(01:10):
maybe Lane can answer.
But Lane, you've been on before.
I really appreciate you comingback on.
Lane Wagner (01:16):
Yeah, thanks so much for having me, man.
It's great to be back.
Don Hansen (01:19):
Yeah, so just a quick intro because there might
be some people that haven't comeacross bootdev or haven't come
across you.
What's a bit of your experiencein the professional dev world.
Lane Wagner (01:32):
Yeah, lightning introduction.
I was a professional developerfor about four years, all
backend stuff.
I actually started my careerwriting writing go, which was
kind of unique, especially backin 2016.
Um, I I learned to go incollege and then was able to
find a job at sort of a local, avery small local dev shop um
(01:57):
writing some python, writingsome go, writing some c++.
Um quickly moved from there toa larger sass, again writing Go,
this time kind of more on thedeeper back end side of the
stack.
It was like microservices,kubernetes, that kind of stuff
for about another three yearsand then I transitioned into a
(02:19):
management role.
Granted, it was managing asmall team of Go developers, so
we were a team of like four,three or four, kind of you know,
changed over the years, didthat for three years and it was
at that point this is just acouple of years ago where I quit
and went full time on boot dev.
So it's been about eight yearsnow in total.
(02:39):
But you know, half of that isan IC, an individual contributor
, and then kind of half of thatleading a as an IC and
individual contributor and thenkind of half of that leading a
team of of go devs.
Don Hansen (02:48):
Okay, really cool.
So quite a bit of experience.
What inspired you to even buildbootdev?
Lane Wagner (02:56):
Yeah, um, that's a great question because I mean,
there's a lot of courses outthere, uh, and it's, it's I
would describe it as a fairlycrowded market, uh, business
like from a business perspective.
But at the time so this waslike 2020 when I, when I first
started thinking about it um, mywife wanted to get into coding.
(03:16):
Uh, she was working as an x-raytech at the hospital where we
lived and she's very she's.
She's like me in the sense thatshe really likes math.
She really likes to use thatside of her brain, um, not as
into like design and front endsright, and making things look
pretty.
But she really wanted to dokind of the logic, heavy math,
(03:37):
heavy stuff, and um, so I waslike great, like, let's find
some online programs for you.
She's really sharp again,really good at math.
Like I knew she'd pick it upquickly.
She already had a bachelor'sdegree in x-ray technology, so
we didn't really want to go backto school to do another.
You know, four years of CSeducation and at that time and
(03:59):
this is a little bit anecdotalbut like I'd worked with a lot
of developers and about half thedevelopers I'd worked with um
didn't have a degree Right, so Iwas like very much in this
mindset of like you don't need adegree if you, if you know what
you're doing and you learn yourstuff, um, so I was like let's
go find, let's go find somewherefor you to learn.
And I could only find front enduh related educational resources
(04:20):
, at least online resources, uh,which is pretty frustrating.
Um, and you'll also hear theterm full stack, but at least,
especially in my world, comingfrom like deep backend and uh,
data engineering, like even thefull stack stuff was like really
front end.
Right, it was like 80% frontend and then like you connect it
(04:42):
to my SQL or something, um, soI just kind of saw this gap,
like in the education market.
I was like you connect it toMySQL or something.
So I just kind of saw this gaplike in the education market.
I was like it would be reallycool if someone was out there
teaching, you know, back enddevelopment, online, self paced,
and then we have all the weirdextra stuff that we do, like the
gamification.
That's just more, I think, thepersonality of those working on
(05:03):
it more than anything else.
Yeah, I think the personalityof those of us working on it
more than anything else.
Don Hansen (05:06):
Yeah, I think the gamification is really
interesting and I think it'sunique I haven't even seen that
on the front end side and itshows, you know, maybe a bit of
a preference for games in thepast that you might have had.
Like it seems like you reallybrought your history and your
personality into bootdev and youknow what.
Let me ask you about that, like, why did you make the decision
(05:27):
to make that?
Because it feels like it's avery core piece of your course,
but why do you make the businessdecision to make an educational
resource so gamified?
Lane Wagner (05:40):
So I don't know how many people in your audience
are business nerds or marketingnerds, but for those of you that
are, if you one day want tostart a startup, there's a book
I'd recommend called the PurpleCow by Seth Godin Very good book
.
It is about exactly what itsounds like it's about.
The idea is basically, ifyou're going to launch something
(06:02):
, it should be a purple cow.
It should be like a very unique, very strange.
People should kind of look atit and like go huh, what the
like, what the hell is that?
It'll make it a lot easier toget traction and it also means
you're probably adding somethingmore again, unique and valuable
to the world, because nobodyneeds another clone of an app,
(06:23):
right, like, we need new,innovative, cool stuff.
So when I started BootDev, theimpetus was this focus on
backend.
It was a content differentiator, but then we fairly quickly
decided this is like early daysit was me and my first employee,
alan that focusing reallyheavily on the gamification,
(06:49):
making it fun, making thevisuals interesting um, would
just be another way to kind ofstand out and make it and make
it fun.
Then we really started to dosome research on like the
psychological benefits of allthe gamification was like wow,
this actually makes it like wayeasier for people to stick with
and there's some realeducational benefits to doing it
.
But I will admit, originally itwas just because it was fun.
Don Hansen (07:11):
That and I hear that all the time.
With a lot of courses it'sreally especially like outside
of coding boot camps, self talkcourses.
It's really hard to get peopleto stick with it.
You might not have this, butoffhand do you kind of have a
ballpark average of like howmany months people stick with
bootdev before they drop out?
Lane Wagner (07:32):
yes, so I actually I'll plug this article.
I just wrote it's if, if you goto blogbootdev it's uh, I moved
my keyboard so I had to go findit.
It's called the State ofLearning to Code 2024 Report.
So anyone that's listening thatwants to bring it up.
I just published this like lastmonth.
It's an info dump of all thesekinds of stats Just in a blog
(07:56):
post.
It's like how many people areusing Vim mode, you know what
are the hardest courses, likeall that kind of stuff.
I gave a talk at Go West Confand this was kind of the premise
of the talk.
But so to answer your questionabout when people drop off, the
best data will be in that blogpost.
But that's actually a reallyhard question to answer
(08:17):
accurately because people joinfor so many different reasons,
and so there's a point in theblog post where I explained we
want to do a better job of this,like what I mean by that is,
for example, people will joinjust to take the Git course,
which might take them two weeks,and they'll do the Git course
and they'll love it, and thenthey'll cancel their
subscription and like might comeback later for another course,
(08:40):
and then you have a lot of otherpeople right who are signing up
and starting at the beginningof the learning path.
They tend to spend a full yeargoing through it.
So what I want to do is diginto that data of like almost
separating people into cohortsby goal.
So then we get a better lookinto you know what like how far
they're actually getting inreference to what they want out
(09:03):
of the platform when they join.
Don Hansen (09:04):
They're actually getting in reference to what
they want out of the platformwhen they join.
I'm going to move on after thisquestion, but do you plan on
doing that through, and first ofall I'll link the article in
the description?
But do you plan on doing thatthrough, like exit surveys to
try?
Lane Wagner (09:18):
to curate that.
I haven't thought of a betterway to do it, unfortunately,
here's the thing From, like, aproduct design perspective.
I hate friction and so, like Ialways hate having those like
when you join the platform.
It's like asking you a bunch ofquestions and try.
It's like I just want to letpeople fucking code.
Sorry, am I allowed to swear onthis?
yeah, absolutely okay, I justwant to let people code.
(09:40):
Like I won't be able to joinand start coding and so I don't
want to have this whole.
So that's actually one of thereasons we haven't really done
that yet is we don't want tointroduce friction into the
getting started phase, um, butwe have a few clever ideas, like
, for example, there are certaincourses where we know if you
start with that course, it'svery likely that you're just
here for that course, like, forexample, the git course.
(10:01):
Like nobody joins boot dev toto start learning to code with
the git course.
It's like you start with thepython course or you jump
straight to the go coursebecause you want to do advanced
stuff, um, so it's like almostidentifying entry points and
then maybe we can uh, you knowderive something from there okay
, that makes a lot of sense.
Don Hansen (10:21):
Um, yeah, so maybe friction at a different point,
but, um, you know and this isjust something to keep in mind
like it's really easy to chasepeople away.
You're right about thatfriction and you hear a bunch of
startup founders talking aboutthat, especially with landing
pages and stats on landing pagesand conversions.
So in the early days, what waslike the most unexpected
(10:45):
challenge that you faced?
That really kind of put awrench in things.
Lane Wagner (10:50):
So in the very, very early days, the wrench was
just not having any students.
Like it sounds dumb and obvious, but it's true.
I mean, like for the, for thefirst year that I was writing
courses, I think I wrote likethree or four courses.
I basically had zero students.
Like I definitely had norevenue and was like spending
more money and time on boot devthan I was getting out of it.
(11:13):
Um, I mean, it was net negativeall the way, like until a few
months after I went full time,so I mean already over two years
into the project at that point.
Um, so, just underestimating howhard it is to find initial
users when you have, you know,essentially no audience.
I had a blog that had sometraffic, but blogs are faceless,
(11:39):
nameless things for the mostpart.
Like think about the last 10articles you read.
Can you even name the authors,right?
Um, it's so.
It's a very low trust medium.
And so converting you know blogreaders who are there to you
know, read about one particulararticle, one particular topic,
into someone that's going to payfor a course it's very low
converting, uh, conversion ratefunnel Um, that was definitely
(12:04):
the hardest thing, uh, uh, butmaybe are you asking more about
like product related, like whatwas hard to build.
Don Hansen (12:11):
I think I'm less interested in that.
I think most developers canfigure that out.
I think you answered myquestion and okay, um, so I
actually, you know, I I'm wayback, uh machine.
I looked up bootdev and so Ithink the first snapshot of an
actual page was like Septemberof 2023.
So you were and I don't know ifit's just inaccurate and it
(12:33):
didn't grab good snapshots, butyou were building courses before
that.
Did you name it anythingdifferently or was it bootdev?
Lane Wagner (12:41):
Yes, it gets embarrassing.
The Wayback Machine is a way toembarrass people that have been
doing stuff online for a longtime, but I mean we just got to
own it.
That's the cost of puttingthings out in public.
Yes, so when I first launchedit, I had a blog that was just
called qvaultio, and the reasonthat it was named that is really
(13:05):
dumb.
I just owned that domain nameand I had zero thought into you
know what the domain name shouldbe.
I just already owned the domainname, so let's just launch it
on there.
The blog grew it.
Actually, funny enough, the bloghad more traffic before we
rebranded the site from QVaultioto bootdev than it even does
(13:28):
now, Just because theinformational articles on there
ranked really well for SEO.
And that rebranding even thoughI set up all the redirects, the
SEO just tanked.
Google did not like the factthat we changed the domain name,
but that's why you probablycan't see the old versions of
the site.
It was light themed, it was.
(13:49):
I mean, it's a disaster Likeit's.
You know, it's nothing like theboot dev we all know today.
Don Hansen (13:54):
The only characteristic you said was like
theme and that's why it was adisaster.
Exactly Um.
So you you've achievedsignificant growth in my opinion
.
Um, do you mind sharing somemetrics like number of students,
and you know you don't have togo into details, that you really
don't want to like revenue oranything private details, but
(14:16):
can you paint a picture of likehow large bootdev is?
Lane Wagner (14:20):
yeah, yeah, I don't mind sharing stuff.
I think I I don't think it'sinformation that, like you know,
I don't think like clutchingyour pearls in in you know when
you're building something andand and not sharing secrets with
competitors.
Like I think people wayoverestimate how much
competitors are able to do withinformation that you give them
not competitors.
Don Hansen (14:40):
But I'm thinking like your sponsorship deals,
would they try to?
Lane Wagner (14:44):
oh yeah, yeah, I don't know.
I mean like I wouldn't sharehow much.
I'm, like you know, paying anindividual sponsor, but I'm
happy to share our revenuenumbers.
So, um, let me give you somenumbers, uh.
And, by the way, these are inthat state of learning to code
report as well, so if anyone'schecking that out, yeah, so, uh,
at the time of writing thereport, we were at 336 000
(15:06):
registered users um and 18 255of them were paying members um.
Monthly revenue right now is,right, around 500 000 per month
wow, okay, that's larger than Iexpected.
That's gonna feel really good inthe last 12 months um, I mean
(15:27):
to give you some context andagain, this is actually already
public information, which is whyI don't mind too much year we
were at like 40K a month inrevenue and then you just go
(15:49):
back like another month or twoand we were at like 20K in
revenue.
So the growth over the lastlike 15, 16 months has just been
crazy.
Don Hansen (15:59):
Yeah, it sounds like it.
What do you think were, like,the key decisions that you made
to see that significant growth?
Lane Wagner (16:08):
um, so it's it's.
It's really hard to pinpointexactly what is responsible for
the different things, but what Iwill say is, for like the six
months leading up to when thegrowth really started, so, like,
um, the beginning of 2023, like, say, the first four or five
(16:31):
months of 2023, um, we justspent a lot of time on the
product, like a lot, a lot oftime building the platform, um,
launching new courses, buildingtooling for the courses, making
it more interactive, like, andwe spent very little time on on
(16:51):
marketing, um, and we saw verylittle little user growth.
But then, when we did start todo more distribution stuff,
particularly through video it'slike I made some courses for
free code camp, um, just likesome free youtube courses, um,
and a few other things that wedid like we started to gain
traction through like free videoresources that we were putting
(17:14):
out, I mean, similar to what youdo on your channel, right, um?
But because at that point, likewe had a product that we knew
was working because, again, it'snot like we had no users before
that we were, but we wereworking with a small user base
but like we were iteratingheavily on the content in the
courses.
So it's like when we did startto push traffic to it.
(17:35):
It started to take off because,like the product was ready to
grow at that point.
It had been, it had beencoalescing for like two years,
right.
So it was almost like we kindof just like let open the
floodgates, so to speak, andhave been riding that wave for
the last year, like a year and ahalf.
Don Hansen (17:55):
That makes sense.
So creating videos for kind ofan already well-established
channel like FreeCodeCamp wasboot or backend banter, a
strategy to bring in traffic tobootdev.
Lane Wagner (18:11):
So backend banter I mean it's, i's, I was really
happy with.
You know how much traffic itgot, but like it's not going to
drive you know the amount oftraffic.
You need to get the revenuenumbers that we have been
putting up or the registereduser numbers right.
Um, to me, the real purpose ofback-end banter is to let people
(18:32):
know, like, who the hell isbuilding this thing right.
Like when people like take acourse, they want to know who's
behind it.
Like why should I trust thisperson?
Do they even know what they'redoing?
Do I like how they communicateright?
Do I like their teaching style?
And so, to me, the podcast wasa way to be like you know if
you're unsure about it or if youjust want to know who I am
(18:52):
before you like pay for anything, because I mean a lot of people
I shouldn't say a lot of peopleeveryone starts out on like a
free tier, free trial of bootdev and they're kind of in this
decision making phase of likewell, should I commit to a
membership and get all theinteractivity?
The podcast is a way to kind ofget to know the creator, and so
it was actually less of a playof you know, bringing people in
(19:14):
and more of a trust building forthe people that are already
sort of in the ecosystem.
Don Hansen (19:21):
That makes sense.
So let me just, I guess, helpclarify for me.
So you saw significant growth,so you built trust with the
users, which you know canindirectly provide some people
to actually sign up and convert,uh, through back-end banter.
But you saw the significantgrowth from creating free videos
(19:42):
on already well-establishedchannels, like free code camp.
Would you say, like that's thethe major marketing strategies.
Lane Wagner (19:48):
That helped that was the first big one.
That was like what got us outof the we are not growing to.
Now we're growing was a handfullike three um courses that we
made for Crico camp, and likeI'll just say they were not,
they were not low effort.
(20:10):
Uh, like I spent a month oneach of them, not like eight
hours a day for a month, butlike a few hours of every
working day for a month.
On all of those.
They're like eight hour, ninehour courses, and so it was like
a pretty big risk at the time.
So it was like I mean we didn'thave money.
(20:33):
Really.
We were like barely break even.
I had one employee like,honestly, most of the revenue we
were making was just going tohis paycheck, uh, and so it was
just like we got to trysomething and so we just put
everything that we could intothese courses and I mean we were
pretty we were noobs at makingvideos back then.
Um, luckily it worked out and II mean Quincy Larson from free
(20:54):
code camp is incredible, um, andhe really appreciated the time
and effort we put into it and hewas nice enough to publish them
, um, so, yeah, that worked outreally well and I will say, I
mean, we got lucky.
Youtube.
There's a lot of luck toYouTube, um, but like the video
that we published last year, itum, it's a walkthrough of our
how to get a job course.
(21:15):
It's like three million views,so this is like an incredible
amount of reach, um.
But again, you know, it took melike that.
One took me over a month to puttogether because I, I, I used
clips from the podcast in therefrom like guests, in fact, I
think, did I have?
Did I ask you for a clip?
Don Hansen (21:32):
I am in there.
You're in there.
Yeah, I'm famous now of you.
Lane Wagner (21:35):
It's like that one was so much work to put together
, but it did eventually pay off.
Don Hansen (21:40):
That was a really good video.
You did a good job with that.
Lane Wagner (21:42):
Thanks, appreciate it.
Don Hansen (21:45):
That's an interesting strategy because you
know a lot of content creatorsare really trying to figure out.
I think a lot of contentcreators are focused on building
content to be able to markettheir products and you know
that's just a common strategy ifyou want to go full time as a
content creator and you got toget that product out, but not a
lot of content creators haveachieved anywhere near the
success that you have.
And you know one thing that'sinteresting is always for me,
(22:08):
pricing, because sometimes I seedevs and content creators will
do like a bulk or not a bulkpricing, but like $95 for this
course and you essentially ownit right Versus a subscription
model.
What made you go with $50 amonth and that subscription
model?
Lane Wagner (22:24):
Yeah, um, and I'll even just to clarify for
everyone listening it's $50.
We have a $50 a month a monthtier, um, if you pay once every
month, so pay monthly.
And then it's like uh, 29 permonth if you pay for a year up
front, which is like discountedannual plans.
Um, we used to have a lifetime.
We can get into why I turnedthat off.
(22:45):
Uh, here in a minute, um.
But let me start with why Idon't just do the thing that a
lot of creators do, which ishere's my course.
It's ninety nine dollars.
Buy it once you have it.
To me, that's like static media.
So it's like if I were sellinga book or if I were selling a
single cut of a video course, Iwould use that pricing model.
(23:05):
It makes sense, right?
It's like I made this video.
I'm now selling this content toyou.
You can download it.
It's $99.
That's great.
Boot dev is not that at all.
Boot dev, the courses areupdated almost daily.
There's a team of nine of usand we get over 100 reports on
the individual lessons in thecourse every day and we're in
(23:31):
there updating them.
You know, reworking assignments, trying to make them clear,
trying to make the explanationsbetter, the challenges better.
So it's very much this likeliving product.
And then and then, of course,the other thing is on boot dev,
all of our content is alreadyfree, so the text, the videos,
all that stuff's just, I mean,you can just create a free
(23:53):
account and access all of it.
What you're paying for when youbuy a membership is the
interactivity, which part of itis the ability to run the code
in the browser and use thecommand line tool to check your
work.
Part of it also is the AIchatbot boots, which is not
cheap to run because it's backedby, you know, open AI and
anthropic, and so a subscriptionmodel is like the only thing
(24:15):
that makes financial sense.
It's like, you know, you getaccess essentially to chat GPT
through the boot dev site, aspecific, you know, version of
chat GPT.
That's kind of optimized forteaching the content, but it
can't really make sense with anyother monetization strategy.
Don Hansen (24:35):
Yeah, so the AI is named Boots, right?
Yeah, he's a bear Nice.
Lane Wagner (24:41):
Okay.
Don Hansen (24:42):
So I feel like you know, I've been paying attention
to AI being introduced into theeducational space with
developers and I feel like it'sa pretty controversial push.
I do see it being morecontroversial with building out
essentially an entire coursewith AI and maybe there's not a
lot of integrity, there's not alot of quality control over
(25:04):
what's being created.
Lane Wagner (25:05):
You're talking about, like generating a course
with AI?
Don Hansen (25:08):
And that's where I'm seeing a lot of the controversy
.
But you have an interestingangle with it where you are
using AI as a mentor.
Now I'm kind of curious aboutthe pros and cons of that and
like what you've noticed inreports and complaints or
anything like that, because Ithink my big concern is
hallucinations, you know,incorrect data that's leading
people in the wrong direction.
I would imagine that'shappening rarely, but can you
(25:31):
kind of just dive into yourexperience with launching that
the good and the bad?
Lane Wagner (25:36):
Yeah.
So I mean, like everyone else,I've been following generative
AI really closely ever sinceChad GPT launched.
The first thing I'll say isthat generating content with AI
educational content, liketalking, like lessons, like the
text or even scripts for videosor anything is dog water.
(25:57):
Like, if anyone's doing that,like their content shouldn't
even be ranking on Google, letalone like it's definitely not
good enough to be paid for, andthat's that's not like just a
philosophical stance, like we'vetested a lot, like you know
what you can actually do withgenerating content.
It's bland, it's not unique, itlacks real world use cases and
(26:19):
experiences and stories.
Um, it's really not good.
And the whole play for us withboo dev is like if we launch a
course, we want it to be likethe best course there is on that
subject.
Now, of course, not everyone isgoing to agree.
You know that our course is thebest course there is on that
subject.
Now, of course, not everyone isgoing to agree.
You know that our course is thebest on this, but like that's
our goal.
So we'd much rather publishfewer good courses than more not
(26:41):
as good courses.
I guess is the way I, what I'mtrying to trying to say.
So we don't generate contentwith AI.
I mean we.
We use it for various things,like, for example, I found that
it's really good at insertinglinks to documentation right,
like when I cite one of the Gostandard libraries things, it
knows the link to thatdocumentation.
(27:02):
It's really easy to insert inour markdown.
So it's made our lives easier.
Like we're able to producecontent a little more quickly
using it.
We're certainly not scared ofit, but we can't generate
content with it.
Boots is very different.
Boots is basically a chat GPTwindow built into the boot dev
platform and there's two thingsthat make it, in my opinion, way
(27:24):
better than just like havingchat GPT up in another window.
The first is he's trained onthe lesson, so he has context
for what you're trying toaccomplish and for our solution,
so he doesn't reallyhallucinate bad solutions
because he knows, like, theinstructor's solution and then
(27:45):
he's been trained to not give itto you.
So this is like.
The other value proposition ofBoots is he's been trained with
a bunch of examples on, like howto take where you're at and
what you're struggling with andask you questions about your
approach.
Like, oh hey, I see that you'redoing this on this line, like
(28:06):
that might be a problem for X, y, z reason.
Can you look into that Right?
So it's the Socratic method atthe end of the day.
But the goal is to have himguide you toward the solution
rather than just hand it to you,like.
Don Hansen (28:18):
I mean, that's what chat gpt does by default yeah,
you're right and I I think well,there's nuance in using ai's
mentor and that's the nuance.
You can't have.
It give you the solutions youneed to be able to critically
think on your own, but you canhave hints and steps towards.
You know the right direction,but you don't really learn when
you're given the solutions.
(28:38):
It's the same when you're justcopying and pasting from Stack
Overflow.
You know, even just like somepeople would justify copying and
pasting and then reading outwhat's being written, but you
still learn more thoroughly whenyou're writing it out yourself
and thinking through the actualsolution.
So I like what you've done withthat and I think it's an
interesting concept.
(28:59):
And so the context you know,sometimes you have that context
window that is limited, whichkeeps expanding with open AI,
but you're just kind ofresetting that context window
with some defaults, but the newproblem, the new solution, and
then you kind of don't need anyother context from other
previous lessons, right?
Lane Wagner (29:17):
For the most part, I'm trying to remember all
that's in the context window.
At the moment, like you said,the context window has gotten
very large.
Gpt-4.0 is like 128,000 tokensin the context window, oh wow.
It's epic now.
Yeah, it's gotten quite large,so like we're not really too
constrained on space, um.
But I think I think all we giveboots for context is like the
(29:39):
lesson you're on, the chapteryou're on, and then basically,
like you said everything in thatlesson, like here's the
solution, here's the currentstate of the student's code,
here's what the student's asking.
Um, use the socratic method andtalk like you're a you know
bear wizard I mean I wentthrough it before I.
Don Hansen (29:58):
I partnered with you I I thought it was pretty neat.
I liked him I'm glad.
Lane Wagner (30:01):
I mean and like you said, he does hallucinate
sometimes like it's still an llm.
Um, we just have a littledisclaimer at the bottom.
Of all his messages is like if,if you think there's a, if you
think this is suspect, like goto the discord and ask a human
like that's uh, our discord isis kind of the backup plan I
like that.
Don Hansen (30:19):
I think that makes your program pretty unique.
Um, what do you think is like aflaw about that, regardless of
whether you think you can solveit or not, like what's that?
Like one thing nagging in theback of your mind?
Lane Wagner (30:32):
That's a good question.
At the moment the big thing isthe lack of language choice.
So at the moment if you want todo boot dev, you learn computer
science basics in Python andthen you learn backend
development in Go.
And, as you mentioned at thebeginning of the show, our
(30:55):
philosophy is about teachingfundamentals first.
So you know our students thatcomplete the whole platform by
the end.
A lot of them have gone on toget jobs writing java or ruby or
whatever.
Um, because they're confidentenough to.
You know, pick up a framework inanother language within, you
know it just takes like a couplepersonal projects and they're
like good to go.
But for, like I'll say first,that's not.
(31:20):
That's obviously not as good asactually doing the like
back-end portion in, say, rubyor java.
If that's what you're going togo on and work in, like, that
would obviously be better.
And also that idea that, like,you can learn fundamentals in
one or two languages and go onto be a developer in a different
language.
It's obvious to developers Likewe know, that if we're really
(31:43):
interested in a language likeyeah, we can pick it up in a
month unless it's rust, then ittakes like seven lifetimes, but
like any other language.
You know, we can like pick itup fairly quickly if we
understand the concepts.
That's definitely not obviousto new programmers.
There's this idea that, likewhen you're a programmer, you
learn one language Like I'm aPython programmer and if I'm
going to learn another language,it's like learning another
(32:05):
natural language.
It's like I speak French andEnglish.
I can't be a German speaker.
It's like, well, actually, yeah, you can.
I can't be a German speaker.
It's like, well, actually, yeah, you can.
It's like really easy to learna third programming language
once you know two.
Don Hansen (32:20):
So anyways, I would say the big weakness is we want
to expand into other programminglanguages.
That makes sense.
And your focus still remainskind of on the foundation, which
a lot of courses that probablyare your competition seem to
lack.
A lot of courses are tosupplement, um, they're there to
, to supplement what computerscience degrees don't give you,
(32:41):
um, applicable skills withmodern frameworks, that kind of
let you hit the ground runningwith some positions at some
companies, um.
But when I was looking atstudies I did see I guess I'm
kind of answering the questionI'm going to give you.
Maybe you have a differentanswer but when I looked at
studies and I even back in theday when coding boot camps were
(33:05):
actually they had some depth toit.
They weren't just trying tospit out the last bit of profit
as kind of the industry is goingunder, bit of profit as kind of
the industry is going under.
I feel like they did a reallygood job at getting people to
hit the ground running andsupplementing what CS students
weren't capable of.
But CS had a really solidfoundation and it just wasn't
programming foundation, it wasCS concepts in general that make
(33:27):
you marketable even outside ofsoftware engineer positions.
But you know there are stillkind of like.
I think Bolt are really healthy, and if you have a long runway
to be able to try to get yourfirst developer job, you're
eventually going to do Bolt,you're going to build a solid
foundation and learn applicableskills, and it's going to set
you up for more success if youcan have that runway.
What made you decide, though,to highly focus on the
(33:52):
foundation?
Lane Wagner (33:53):
Yeah, my perception of coding bootcamps circa when
I started boot dev so around2020, um was like, as you
mentioned, they were doingbetter than.
But and this is this is veryanecdotal, so I'm sure you
actually know a lot more aboutthis than I do my perception as
(34:14):
a hiring manager, havinginterviewed, like some boot
bootcamp grads and I'm sure it'sskewed based on my geographic
location and all that kind ofstuff but was it?
They did teach fairly shallowlyIs that a word?
Like they didn't go too far indepth.
These are like 12 to 24 weekprograms and the students were
(34:35):
more successful than they arenow.
Again, this is just anecdotesperception, but not because the
boot camps were better.
I think it was just because themarket was easier.
Like you know, the market in2020 and 2021 for developers was
undeniably much better than2022, 2023, 2024.
Right, I'm biased and I'm stillof the opinion that development
(35:00):
skills are incredibly valuable,um, and that you know the
recessions, the tech recessionsthey come and go um, and you
know it's it's hard to time themarket.
So you know, don't worry toomuch about that um.
But yeah, my perception is onemore of the market has changed
and I think that it always was abetter idea to get a solid
(35:24):
foundation, because that was myfrustration interviewing boot
camp grads.
I don't think it takes that muchlonger to learn the basics
right.
I mean we're talking about likeall our marketing with boot dev
says we say it takes about ayear and I think that's true.
Like some people it'll go alittle faster, some people it'll
take longer.
(35:44):
But like you can learnfundamentals first, cs
algorithms, data structures,programming, design patterns,
how HTTP works, you can learnall of that in a year, as long
as the curriculum is set out ina way that makes sense and moves
(36:05):
smoothly so you're notconstantly like restarting.
Because my perception again hasbeen that a lot of people
getting into code they'reconstantly restarting.
It's like the tutorial hellprocess, right.
Restarting it's like thetutorial hell process, right.
And so if you can map out thislinear curriculum again very
hard to do, but if you can dothat then you can actually move
(36:27):
fairly quickly.
Don Hansen (36:31):
I think starting with the foundations is
incredibly important and it'sdoable and people shy away from
it, but I do believe it'sbecause courses are boring,
which I think does make bootdevvery unique.
Um and it it is hard to do tosupplement a cs degree which is
spitting out software engineersthat are going to be competitive
in a different way than you aswell.
(36:53):
And how do you supplement that?
Do you need to take everysingle course, including general
studies, that you're going togo through with an entire CS
degree?
No, but you do have tounderstand and I think even just
people getting into thisindustry you have to understand
that there's probably a lot moredepth to the foundation and
fundamental concepts that youprobably should start with,
because you're going to have aneasier time.
It is going to lengthen theamount of time it takes you to
(37:15):
become a developer.
But I think what I love aboutyour courses there are so many
courses spitting out people whocan kind of put together apps,
and there are even courses justsaying you know, just you know,
learn Nextjs and you're going tobe a full stack developer and
be hireable with all thesedifferent startups, and that's
just not the truth.
I've been paying attention to alot of the open positions and
people are hiring people with asolid foundation and it's a hard
(37:41):
thing to ingrain in newdevelopers because you have a
lot of content creators givingdifferent advice on how to get
in and how they got in in 2020and 2021.
So I like your focus and I thinkit's what makes bootdev strong,
but I'm kind of curious caneven be separate from bootdev.
(38:04):
What's your main frustrationwith aspiring backend developers
?
What do you feel like they justtruly need to hear the most.
If you could take that thoughtand shove it into their brains
so they lived it, what wouldthat thought be?
Lane Wagner (38:23):
I'm going to go a little bit more general than
backend developers, because mostof my frustrations are just
about what I'll consideraspiring developers in general,
and it's around expectationsetting and I blame our industry
, the ed tech and actually I'mnot just going to blame us.
You know what I'm not done.
(38:44):
As Dennis Reynolds would say,I'm frustrated with the way we
market computer science anddeveloper education, as well as
the way universities do it,because I think both of them, I
think there's issues everywhere.
Here's the take universities doit because I think both of them
, I think there's issueseverywhere.
Here's the take um, learning tocode and becoming a developer
(39:05):
for a while was extremelylucrative and very cushy job.
It's still an extremelylucrative, lucrative and very
cushy job if you're goddamn goodand like.
That's the difference.
There's a lot of people thatthink of becoming a developer as
this binary thing where, likeyou get your first job as a
(39:26):
developer and, like now you're adeveloper.
But there is a huge differencebetween developers that are paid
$400,000 a year to write reallyintense code that solves really
hard problems for companiesthat are making like handfuls of
money right, they have so muchcash they don't know what to do
with versus like you know, youknow how to put HTML and CSS on
(39:49):
a page for, like you know, alocal, a local chiropractor's
office or something like theseare two very fundamentally
different jobs, and so this isthe reason like and not to
disparage people that are, youknow, you know WordPress
developers, or HTML, CSS andWordPress, or I should say, and
(40:10):
like front end frameworks.
In my mind, like in thebusiness industry, I would
almost classify that type ofwork as like.
If you want to get paid reallywell, you almost have to start
specializing in marketing on topof just like web development
skills, right, Because it's notjust like, can you write some
HTML and CSS?
It's like you got to makesomething beautiful that
converts.
(40:31):
If what you're really passionateabout is programming and you
want to be a really goodprogrammer, then you have to be
a really good programmer so thatyou can get paid a lot of money
to work on complex you knowhard to fit in your head backend
systems that are servingmillions of requests, right?
So it's just an expectation oflike.
(40:53):
If you're going to get into theindustry, you really should
like it at least at some level.
I mean, I prefer to play Dota 2than to write code.
I still like to write code,though, and you've got to like
it to some degree and you've gotto go in with eyes wide open
that, if you're going to reallysucceed, if this is going to be
(41:14):
something again that makes you alot of money, where you're able
to demand really good lifestylebenefits from the companies you
work at like aim to be a top 10developer.
Like don't don't aim for, youknow, middle of the pack that's
the problem.
Don Hansen (41:30):
I mean like, wow, yeah, that's the problem with so
many aspiring developers.
It's that's the trick is gettingthem to see that, to want to be
that right, and maybe time andexperience, like getting some
exposure into the industry, cankind of give you opportunities
to meet good developers andyou're like I want to be like
(41:53):
him or her and like I aspire tobe that person, and so I'm going
to aim for that.
But, man, a lot of people doneed to hear that.
I meet so many people, peoplethat come into my live streams,
people that I mentored, wherethey've set the bar so low for
themselves and it's likesometimes it's self-confidence,
like they're not capable ofbeing a really good developer,
(42:15):
even one day not today, one dayday like they don't see
themselves as that.
But there are a lot of reallybrilliant developers that I
don't think have like incrediblyhigh iq above yours.
They just put in the effort,they put in a lot of time, like
almost everyone is capable ifyou enjoy it and you put the
(42:36):
damn time into it.
I wish more people understoodthat.
Lane Wagner (42:41):
And it's worth pointing out.
I mentioned this before like Iwouldn't say like I love
programming in the sense that,like again, that I'd rather
program in my free time than,like you know, play video games
or hang out with my family orsomething.
It's like that's not true.
But it's a virtuous cycle thatyou want to get yourself into
where, uh, as you get better atprogramming, you start liking
(43:04):
programming more, right, and asyou like programming more, you
start getting better atprogramming faster.
Uh, and that's not alwaysobvious when you start out,
because everything feels reallyhard.
Uh, everything feels reallyhard and you know you get burnt
out after two hours of bangingyour head on like one function
that's not working.
But it's worth noting that itdoesn't always feel that way,
like these days when I learn anew language.
(43:26):
It's just fun Because I havethat really foundational
knowledge and those years ofexperience where it's just like
oh, yeah, that's how that works,oh, that's cool.
I like how they designed this.
Like it's not this.
Like, oh, how, yeah, that's howthat works, oh, that's cool.
I like how they designed thislike it's not this.
Like, oh, how, how am I goingto write that?
Like why is it not working likeit does get a lot more fun as
it goes along.
(43:46):
So just I mean that's that'simportant to just understand,
that you will overcome thatfeeling of it's really hard and
that's making it not fun no,you're right, and like I mean, I
don't know how relatable thisis, but like, how do you build a
habit?
Don Hansen (44:01):
You just do it and then you build a habit.
You don't build a habitinitially, right, and I've I've
noticed that I've even peoplethat CSS is a really good
example, people that hate CSS.
I tell them all the time.
I'm like once you're good at it, you will like it.
But back, a lot of backenddevelopers will never believe me
, but I hated it for the longesttime and so many frontend
developers hated CSS and maybesome people still will.
(44:22):
That's fine, but I do feel likethere's so many aspects of
programming that get really funand addicting and you wake up
and you want to do it when yougive yourself time, and I think
some people just need to givethemselves time.
I think that's good advice, andI think some people just need
(44:43):
to give themselves time.
I think that's good advice.
So, five years down the road,what are you doing?
What does bootdev look like?
What does backend banter.
Lane Wagner (44:50):
Look like that's a good question.
I don't know.
I know that a lot of creators.
So it's a very like what I doday to day is a very creative
work which I enjoy.
So it's a very like what I doday-to-day is a very creative
work which I enjoy.
Um, like you know, writingcourses, basically recording
videos, um, building theplatform, like it's all really
fun stuff.
But I will say I am going likereally hard on it and I have
been for almost four years.
(45:11):
Uh, so like five years from nowI would love to still be going
hard, but, like, I guess whatI'm saying is I hope I don't
burn out at some point, becauseit's not.
It's not, uh, you know the samepace at which I was working at
my other jobs.
It's not just a standard nineto five sort of thing.
Um, so like, personally, Idon't know, uh, where I'll be.
(45:35):
I guess that just depends onhow, how my mental state hangs
on throughout the years, butwhere the product will be, I do
know where I want that to go.
I mean, the goal is to startwith back-end development and
make the best back-enddevelopment career path, so
cover everything within thecontext of back-end development
that we possibly can.
(45:55):
At the moment I'm writing acourse on static file servers.
It's like how to use AWS S3within the context of a web
server that's serving likevideos and, you know, streaming
stuff and all that good stuff.
So we have, we have a bunch ofstuff, a bunch of content we
have to make regarding back enddevelopment and then, like I
mentioned, I want to expand intoother programming languages.
(46:16):
So you know, you're not just.
You have the option essentiallyto learn the backend portion of
the learning path in either Goor TypeScript or Python.
That'll take a lot of work.
The good news is we organizeour concept or our courses by
concept.
So it's like functionalprogramming is a course, happens
to be in Python, but it'sfairly easy for us.
(46:36):
I should say.
You know, it's like maybe aquarter of the work or a fifth
of the work to take that and nowoffer it in a second
programming language.
It's like very similar conceptsbeing taught in every lesson,
just using a different syntax.
So that's like step number twois offered in multiple languages
, and then step number threewould be to branch out into
(46:57):
completely new career paths.
So we'd probably start withlike data engineering, data
analysis, devops and really tryto cover everything except front
end.
That's what it sounds like.
Don Hansen (47:12):
I love that when so there are different career paths
.
I've seen this.
So again, I've seen a lot ofcoding bootcamps go down
different paths and a lot ofcoding bootcamps the quality
tends to go down when theybranch way too far out of their
original career path and yourfocus kind of really honing in
on the backend.
(47:32):
Um, I would expect the qualityof your other paths to go down
when you start branching intofront end.
I've seen it so many times.
I'm sure you have a goodcurriculum, you have good
instructors, but a lot of thesecoding bootcamps are really good
or curriculum developers andthey just it, just when it
(47:53):
almost seems like your attentionis just split and you stop
caring about what truly you knowgot you motivated to build this
thing from the ground up andlike who you're trying to serve.
So I hope you never go frontend.
I truly do and let you know,let other people kind of tackle
the front end, but that that'sawesome.
Lane Wagner (48:13):
I think it's mostly a question of of focus, like
you said.
So right now, there's five ofus on like the product and
engineering side and we're justfocused on this backend
developer path, and two of usare boot dev graduates.
So two of the engineers workingon the team one of them did the
whole career path twice I mean,these are like top 0.1%
(48:36):
students, like absolutelyincredible.
Shout out to Matt and dan.
In fact, that was the one that,uh, introduced me to your
youtube channel uh, he waswatching.
Uh, he was watching some don thedeveloper, but uh, we're all
focused on that.
So if we're like, the more wespread out with content, we have
to add people and give them theprerogative of focusing on that
(48:58):
thing, which is fundamentallyhard to do.
So I agree, the quality doestend to go down as things grow,
which is why we're just going todo it slowly.
Don Hansen (49:08):
I like it.
So, for content creators anddevs that are thinking about
building their course and even,like actually me, who's thinking
about building a course um,what advice would you give us?
What advice would you wish youhad known, you know, when you
(49:28):
first started?
Lane Wagner (49:34):
the first.
The first thing I'll say islike I'm biased because I'm not
content creator first, coursesecond.
I'm course first, contentcreator second, which is a very
different way of kind of lookingat your.
You know, frankly, your likemedia business and my belief is
(49:56):
that if you're going to make acourse, you should do it because
you think there's somethingunique you're doing Right Again,
to go back to what I was sayingearlier, like there's so many
courses out there, you reallynot only does the world not need
just another course on X, likejust another course on react or
(50:19):
just another course on html, um,it's not just that the world
doesn't need that.
From like this, you knowphilosophical or like ethical
standpoint, it's like no, youwon't be able to sell it.
Like there's so many of those,uh yeah, it's probably just not
a good use of time.
So it's it's really honing onsomething unique and and for us
it's a little different becauselike yeah, there's a lot of
(50:41):
Python courses out there we tookthis angle of just building a
hyper interactive platform withall the gamification and stuff
is like kind of what made it orwhat makes it unique.
And if you are thinking aboutwriting a course and you are a
content creator and you do havea following.
I mean, we partner with contentcreators.
(51:01):
You know, primogen wrote boththe Git courses on bootdev, tj,
just finished our memorymanagement course.
So we do make most of ourcontent in-house, but we do sort
of selectively work with peopleto build stuff on platform.
There's a lot of caveats though.
For example, you know, if youbuild your own course and
(51:22):
self-publish, you have fullcontrol.
Obviously, if you build yourown course and put it on Udemy,
you have mostly full controlright.
So it's a video, you upload it.
We're kind of control freaks inthe sense that we do like heavy
reviews, we're constantlyupdating and maintaining um.
You know, since the primogenpublished his git course, we've
added lessons to it, uh, stufflike that.
(51:43):
So it's like um working with us.
You do give up a bit of control.
I mean, we'll say, of course,that it's all in the pursuit of
of quality and better materialat the end of the day, but it is
, you know it is a littledifferent okay, I think that's
really good advice.
Don Hansen (51:59):
I appreciate that yeah you're right, um, just from
my own thoughts.
I mean, I've reviewed so manycourses and there aren't a lot
of unique ones, and sometimesmaybe people need to sit on
their idea a little bit more,like, don't just build a course,
because that's the thing to Um,really sit on your idea and
(52:19):
flush that out, brainstorm andcause there are a lot of
opportunities.
Like a lot of people are stillstruggling as aspiring
developers, which means thereare a lot of opportunities to
catch their attention and dosomething unique where their
previous course didn't catchthat attention.
Um, so yeah, that's good advice.
Lane Wagner (52:37):
I'll just say so, yeah, that's good advice.
I'll just say there's one morething on that.
Um, yeah, and to get likereally scrooge mcduck about like
how this whole industry works,um, because I mean, your
audience is really smart.
I've seen some of your videoslike they, they kind of get how
this works and and I'll kind ofpull back the curtain a little
bit and talk a bit about how,like the content creation game
(52:58):
works.
Like when you have a followingon YouTube, the big following,
let's say, you know, 500,000views per video or a million
views per video.
Like you make money from ads onYouTube.
So your primary quote, unquotecustomer is whoever the hell is
buying ads on YouTube, which,like you, don't really have
control over YouTube, just feedsads.
Um, that doesn't monetize verywell.
(53:18):
Like, considering you'regetting a million views per
video, you're not actuallymaking all that much money
through just native AdSense,which is why so many creators
launch a course or sell aproduct, maybe partner with a
brand.
Right, it's why Mr Beast doesFeastables and Logan Paul does
Prime.
You can get more money byselling your own thing or by
(53:41):
partnering with a company thatsells something.
So here's kind of my again verybiased, very selfish take on how
I think about the codingeducation industry.
I want to keep working withgreat content creators who do
you know edutainment, likeinteresting technical content on
(54:01):
youtube, because I want tofocus on making courses.
I I don't want to really builda big youtube channel.
It's not what I'm passionateabout, it's not my core
expertise, so, like I just wantto build a really really really
good course platform, um, and Ilike partnering with creators
for basically the reverse reasonof that, because I I also get
(54:22):
frustrated when a creatorlaunches a course, what I would
consider to be like a low effortcourse, just because it's going
to do all day, every day, andand that's kind of what we're
trying to do.
More broadly speaking, in tech,youtube is, is, is, is make
(54:44):
really high quality courses andthen kind of partner with
creators on the distributionside.
Sorry to nerd out aboutbusiness, but that's uh, that's
the plan.
Don Hansen (54:52):
It's fascinating and so, like you know, if any other
content creators are watchingthis kind of a call to action
like what, do you have anycourses you're hoping to get
built?
I think the question is gonnabe like, well, you know, what do
you want from me?
What can I build?
Lane Wagner (55:05):
yeah, that's a great question.
So first thing I'll say is likewe're this is gonna make me
sound like an asshole, and maybeI am but like we're really
picky, uh, and and like I said,we're not udemy, so like udemy
will just like let anyone uploada course, um, and like they
have like 10 000 react courses Idon't know how many they
actually have, right but likeyou could just upload stuff, um,
(55:27):
for us.
It's.
It's a very deep partnership oflike we are writing this thing
with you, we're helping youproduce it, like all that kind
of stuff.
So it's like a it's a muchlonger and deeper conversation,
um, and we are buildingcurriculum.
So it's like what do we neednext?
So like, right now we're mostlygetting the go stuff converted
(55:48):
to typescript, um, and so we'reshipping like a new javascript
course and a new typescriptcourse.
But what I'll say is just likewe love working with creators,
whether you write a course forus or just we have like an
affiliate deal.
So anyone that's interested inworking with us hit us up, happy
to chat.
Maybe it makes sense to write acourse, maybe it doesn't, but I
(56:08):
at least like to chat witheveryone.
Don Hansen (56:10):
Okay, all right.
Well, I appreciate you sharingthat.
That's pretty much it, and Iappreciate you nerding out on
the business stuff.
You know, part of thisconversation was a little bit
selfish.
I was really curious how youran things.
And you know, and I've gottento, I follow you on Twitter and
I see what you post and you havea lot of integrity and you
truly do care about a lot ofpeople trying to just better
(56:31):
their lives, which is awesome.
It's another reason why Iwanted to talk to you again, but
I'm out of questions.
You gave a lot of information.
I appreciate that.
So you know, if people want toreach out to you and anything
else you want to share, wherecould people find you?
Lane Wagner (56:46):
Thanks, yeah, and likewise, by the way, like I
said, matt, our one of our starstudents on boot dev, now one of
our star employees, a huge fanof the channel, and he put me in
contact with you.
You do great stuff umappreciate that, yeah, um, if
anyone wants to reach, I meanobviously like boot dev is there
.
In fact you have a promo codelike use don's promo code, is it
(57:10):
?
Is it just don the developer?
That's it you encourage me tojust do don the dev.
But I stuck with don thedeveloper, yeah don the
developer, don't, don't typo it25 off, um.
So yeah, if you want to, if youwant bootdev, check it out, um.
But if you want to contact mepersonally, I will say I'm.
I'm getting worse and worseabout responding to dms as the
days go by, but the best placeis discord.
(57:33):
So bootdev slash community um.
Other than that, you know youcan shoot me a Twitter DM or a
LinkedIn DM.
Can't guarantee I'll respond,but if you make it interesting,
I probably will.
I get too many to respond toall of them, but I will.
I'll do my best.
Don Hansen (57:49):
Okay, that sounds good, all right.
Well, I know a lot of bootdevsaudience is probably watching.
Probably got served to some ofmy audience but, uh, for a lot
of aspiring back-end developers,um, you know, at the very least
, feel free to check out lane'scontent.
He brings on a lot of, a lot ofcontent critters, a lot of
really good developers andcontent critters.
You probably watch on it, youknow, a weekly basis.
(58:11):
But, um, yeah, lane, seriously,uh, stick around just for a
couple minutes, but thank you somuch for coming on again
absolutely thanks, don.
Today we are going to dive into the world of
bootdev.
If you don't know and if youhaven't heard about them already
, bootdev is a pretty lengthyin-depth course that aims to
help aspiring backend devs tryto land that first position and
get them prepared.
Do a better job at preparingpeople than a lot of the full
(00:26):
stack courses, even coding bootcamps, that'll kind of just
touch on.
When they do dive into backend,it's more no JS express, no
opinionated framework, anythinglike that.
They don't really dive into alot of depth.
They prepare you to kind ofjust be an app developer, where
bootdev seems to dive a littlebit deeper and really build that
solid foundation.
So you know full transparency.
I partnered as an affiliate withthem.
(00:47):
So you know there might be somebias.
But I chose to partner withthem for a reason and I get to
bring on Lane again today tokind of dive into not only the
history of bootdev, because I'mkind of curious about that, but
also hopefully we can come outwith some advice for any
developers or content creatorsthat are trying to create a
course.
And you know, selfishly I havesome of my own questions that
(01:10):
maybe Lane can answer.
But Lane, you've been on before.
I really appreciate you comingback on.
Lane Wagner (01:16):
Yeah, thanks so much for having me, man.
It's great to be back.
Don Hansen (01:19):
Yeah, so just a quick intro because there might
be some people that haven't comeacross bootdev or haven't come
across you.
What's a bit of your experiencein the professional dev world.
Lane Wagner (01:32):
Yeah, lightning introduction.
I was a professional developerfor about four years, all
backend stuff.
I actually started my careerwriting writing go, which was
kind of unique, especially backin 2016.
Um, I I learned to go incollege and then was able to
find a job at sort of a local, avery small local dev shop um
(01:57):
writing some python, writingsome go, writing some c++.
Um quickly moved from there toa larger sass, again writing Go,
this time kind of more on thedeeper back end side of the
stack.
It was like microservices,kubernetes, that kind of stuff
for about another three yearsand then I transitioned into a
(02:19):
management role.
Granted, it was managing asmall team of Go developers, so
we were a team of like four,three or four, kind of you know,
changed over the years, didthat for three years and it was
at that point this is just acouple of years ago where I quit
and went full time on boot dev.
So it's been about eight yearsnow in total.
(02:39):
But you know, half of that isan IC, an individual contributor
, and then kind of half of thatleading a as an IC and
individual contributor and thenkind of half of that leading a
team of of go devs.
Don Hansen (02:48):
Okay, really cool.
So quite a bit of experience.
What inspired you to even buildbootdev?
Lane Wagner (02:56):
Yeah, um, that's a great question because I mean,
there's a lot of courses outthere, uh, and it's, it's I
would describe it as a fairlycrowded market, uh, business
like from a business perspective.
But at the time so this waslike 2020 when I, when I first
started thinking about it um, mywife wanted to get into coding.
(03:16):
Uh, she was working as an x-raytech at the hospital where we
lived and she's very she's.
She's like me in the sense thatshe really likes math.
She really likes to use thatside of her brain, um, not as
into like design and front endsright, and making things look
pretty.
But she really wanted to dokind of the logic, heavy math,
(03:37):
heavy stuff, and um, so I waslike great, like, let's find
some online programs for you.
She's really sharp again,really good at math.
Like I knew she'd pick it upquickly.
She already had a bachelor'sdegree in x-ray technology, so
we didn't really want to go backto school to do another.
You know, four years of CSeducation and at that time and
(03:59):
this is a little bit anecdotalbut like I'd worked with a lot
of developers and about half thedevelopers I'd worked with um
didn't have a degree Right, so Iwas like very much in this
mindset of like you don't need adegree if you, if you know what
you're doing and you learn yourstuff, um, so I was like let's
go find, let's go find somewherefor you to learn.
And I could only find front enduh related educational resources
(04:20):
, at least online resources, uh,which is pretty frustrating.
Um, and you'll also hear theterm full stack, but at least,
especially in my world, comingfrom like deep backend and uh,
data engineering, like even thefull stack stuff was like really
front end.
Right, it was like 80% frontend and then like you connect it
(04:42):
to my SQL or something, um, soI just kind of saw this gap,
like in the education market.
I was like you connect it toMySQL or something.
So I just kind of saw this gaplike in the education market.
I was like it would be reallycool if someone was out there
teaching, you know, back enddevelopment, online, self paced,
and then we have all the weirdextra stuff that we do, like the
gamification.
That's just more, I think, thepersonality of those working on
(05:03):
it more than anything else.
Yeah, I think the personalityof those of us working on it
more than anything else.
Don Hansen (05:06):
Yeah, I think the gamification is really
interesting and I think it'sunique I haven't even seen that
on the front end side and itshows, you know, maybe a bit of
a preference for games in thepast that you might have had.
Like it seems like you reallybrought your history and your
personality into bootdev and youknow what.
Let me ask you about that, like, why did you make the decision
(05:27):
to make that?
Because it feels like it's avery core piece of your course,
but why do you make the businessdecision to make an educational
resource so gamified?
Lane Wagner (05:40):
So I don't know how many people in your audience
are business nerds or marketingnerds, but for those of you that
are, if you one day want tostart a startup, there's a book
I'd recommend called the PurpleCow by Seth Godin Very good book
.
It is about exactly what itsounds like it's about.
The idea is basically, ifyou're going to launch something
(06:02):
, it should be a purple cow.
It should be like a very unique, very strange.
People should kind of look atit and like go huh, what the
like, what the hell is that?
It'll make it a lot easier toget traction and it also means
you're probably adding somethingmore again, unique and valuable
to the world, because nobodyneeds another clone of an app,
(06:23):
right, like, we need new,innovative, cool stuff.
So when I started BootDev, theimpetus was this focus on
backend.
It was a content differentiator, but then we fairly quickly
decided this is like early daysit was me and my first employee,
alan that focusing reallyheavily on the gamification,
(06:49):
making it fun, making thevisuals interesting um, would
just be another way to kind ofstand out and make it and make
it fun.
Then we really started to dosome research on like the
psychological benefits of allthe gamification was like wow,
this actually makes it like wayeasier for people to stick with
and there's some realeducational benefits to doing it
.
But I will admit, originally itwas just because it was fun.
Don Hansen (07:11):
That and I hear that all the time.
With a lot of courses it'sreally especially like outside
of coding boot camps, self talkcourses.
It's really hard to get peopleto stick with it.
You might not have this, butoffhand do you kind of have a
ballpark average of like howmany months people stick with
bootdev before they drop out?
Lane Wagner (07:32):
yes, so I actually I'll plug this article.
I just wrote it's if, if you goto blogbootdev it's uh, I moved
my keyboard so I had to go findit.
It's called the State ofLearning to Code 2024 Report.
So anyone that's listening thatwants to bring it up.
I just published this like lastmonth.
It's an info dump of all thesekinds of stats Just in a blog
(07:56):
post.
It's like how many people areusing Vim mode, you know what
are the hardest courses, likeall that kind of stuff.
I gave a talk at Go West Confand this was kind of the premise
of the talk.
But so to answer your questionabout when people drop off, the
best data will be in that blogpost.
But that's actually a reallyhard question to answer
(08:17):
accurately because people joinfor so many different reasons,
and so there's a point in theblog post where I explained we
want to do a better job of this,like what I mean by that is,
for example, people will joinjust to take the Git course,
which might take them two weeks,and they'll do the Git course
and they'll love it, and thenthey'll cancel their
subscription and like might comeback later for another course,
(08:40):
and then you have a lot of otherpeople right who are signing up
and starting at the beginningof the learning path.
They tend to spend a full yeargoing through it.
So what I want to do is diginto that data of like almost
separating people into cohortsby goal.
So then we get a better lookinto you know what like how far
they're actually getting inreference to what they want out
(09:03):
of the platform when they join.
Don Hansen (09:04):
They're actually getting in reference to what
they want out of the platformwhen they join.
I'm going to move on after thisquestion, but do you plan on
doing that through, and first ofall I'll link the article in
the description?
But do you plan on doing thatthrough, like exit surveys to
try?
Lane Wagner (09:18):
to curate that.
I haven't thought of a betterway to do it, unfortunately,
here's the thing From, like, aproduct design perspective.
I hate friction and so, like Ialways hate having those like
when you join the platform.
It's like asking you a bunch ofquestions and try.
It's like I just want to letpeople fucking code.
Sorry, am I allowed to swear onthis?
yeah, absolutely okay, I justwant to let people code.
(09:40):
Like I won't be able to joinand start coding and so I don't
want to have this whole.
So that's actually one of thereasons we haven't really done
that yet is we don't want tointroduce friction into the
getting started phase, um, butwe have a few clever ideas, like
, for example, there are certaincourses where we know if you
start with that course, it'svery likely that you're just
here for that course, like, forexample, the git course.
(10:01):
Like nobody joins boot dev toto start learning to code with
the git course.
It's like you start with thepython course or you jump
straight to the go coursebecause you want to do advanced
stuff, um, so it's like almostidentifying entry points and
then maybe we can uh, you knowderive something from there okay
, that makes a lot of sense.
Don Hansen (10:21):
Um, yeah, so maybe friction at a different point,
but, um, you know and this isjust something to keep in mind
like it's really easy to chasepeople away.
You're right about thatfriction and you hear a bunch of
startup founders talking aboutthat, especially with landing
pages and stats on landing pagesand conversions.
So in the early days, what waslike the most unexpected
(10:45):
challenge that you faced?
That really kind of put awrench in things.
Lane Wagner (10:50):
So in the very, very early days, the wrench was
just not having any students.
Like it sounds dumb and obvious, but it's true.
I mean, like for the, for thefirst year that I was writing
courses, I think I wrote likethree or four courses.
I basically had zero students.
Like I definitely had norevenue and was like spending
more money and time on boot devthan I was getting out of it.
(11:13):
Um, I mean, it was net negativeall the way, like until a few
months after I went full time,so I mean already over two years
into the project at that point.
Um, so, just underestimating howhard it is to find initial
users when you have, you know,essentially no audience.
I had a blog that had sometraffic, but blogs are faceless,
(11:39):
nameless things for the mostpart.
Like think about the last 10articles you read.
Can you even name the authors,right?
Um, it's so.
It's a very low trust medium.
And so converting you know blogreaders who are there to you
know, read about one particulararticle, one particular topic,
into someone that's going to payfor a course it's very low
converting, uh, conversion ratefunnel Um, that was definitely
(12:04):
the hardest thing, uh, uh, butmaybe are you asking more about
like product related, like whatwas hard to build.
Don Hansen (12:11):
I think I'm less interested in that.
I think most developers canfigure that out.
I think you answered myquestion and okay, um, so I
actually, you know, I I'm wayback, uh machine.
I looked up bootdev and so Ithink the first snapshot of an
actual page was like Septemberof 2023.
So you were and I don't know ifit's just inaccurate and it
(12:33):
didn't grab good snapshots, butyou were building courses before
that.
Did you name it anythingdifferently or was it bootdev?
Lane Wagner (12:41):
Yes, it gets embarrassing.
The Wayback Machine is a way toembarrass people that have been
doing stuff online for a longtime, but I mean we just got to
own it.
That's the cost of puttingthings out in public.
Yes, so when I first launchedit, I had a blog that was just
called qvaultio, and the reasonthat it was named that is really
(13:05):
dumb.
I just owned that domain nameand I had zero thought into you
know what the domain name shouldbe.
I just already owned the domainname, so let's just launch it
on there.
The blog grew it.
Actually, funny enough, the bloghad more traffic before we
rebranded the site from QVaultioto bootdev than it even does
(13:28):
now, Just because theinformational articles on there
ranked really well for SEO.
And that rebranding even thoughI set up all the redirects, the
SEO just tanked.
Google did not like the factthat we changed the domain name,
but that's why you probablycan't see the old versions of
the site.
It was light themed, it was.
(13:49):
I mean, it's a disaster Likeit's.
You know, it's nothing like theboot dev we all know today.
Don Hansen (13:54):
The only characteristic you said was like
theme and that's why it was adisaster.
Exactly Um.
So you you've achievedsignificant growth in my opinion
.
Um, do you mind sharing somemetrics like number of students,
and you know you don't have togo into details, that you really
don't want to like revenue oranything private details, but
(14:16):
can you paint a picture of likehow large bootdev is?
Lane Wagner (14:20):
yeah, yeah, I don't mind sharing stuff.
I think I I don't think it'sinformation that, like you know,
I don't think like clutchingyour pearls in in you know when
you're building something andand and not sharing secrets with
competitors.
Like I think people wayoverestimate how much
competitors are able to do withinformation that you give them
not competitors.
Don Hansen (14:40):
But I'm thinking like your sponsorship deals,
would they try to?
Lane Wagner (14:44):
oh yeah, yeah, I don't know.
I mean like I wouldn't sharehow much.
I'm, like you know, paying anindividual sponsor, but I'm
happy to share our revenuenumbers.
So, um, let me give you somenumbers, uh.
And, by the way, these are inthat state of learning to code
report as well, so if anyone'schecking that out, yeah, so, uh,
at the time of writing thereport, we were at 336 000
(15:06):
registered users um and 18 255of them were paying members um.
Monthly revenue right now is,right, around 500 000 per month
wow, okay, that's larger than Iexpected.
That's gonna feel really good inthe last 12 months um, I mean
(15:27):
to give you some context andagain, this is actually already
public information, which is whyI don't mind too much year we
were at like 40K a month inrevenue and then you just go
(15:49):
back like another month or twoand we were at like 20K in
revenue.
So the growth over the lastlike 15, 16 months has just been
crazy.
Don Hansen (15:59):
Yeah, it sounds like it.
What do you think were, like,the key decisions that you made
to see that significant growth?
Lane Wagner (16:08):
um, so it's it's.
It's really hard to pinpointexactly what is responsible for
the different things, but what Iwill say is, for like the six
months leading up to when thegrowth really started, so, like,
um, the beginning of 2023, like, say, the first four or five
(16:31):
months of 2023, um, we justspent a lot of time on the
product, like a lot, a lot oftime building the platform, um,
launching new courses, buildingtooling for the courses, making
it more interactive, like, andwe spent very little time on on
(16:51):
marketing, um, and we saw verylittle little user growth.
But then, when we did start todo more distribution stuff,
particularly through video it'slike I made some courses for
free code camp, um, just likesome free youtube courses, um,
and a few other things that wedid like we started to gain
traction through like free videoresources that we were putting
(17:14):
out, I mean, similar to what youdo on your channel, right, um?
But because at that point, likewe had a product that we knew
was working because, again, it'snot like we had no users before
that we were, but we wereworking with a small user base
but like we were iteratingheavily on the content in the
courses.
So it's like when we did startto push traffic to it.
(17:35):
It started to take off because,like the product was ready to
grow at that point.
It had been, it had beencoalescing for like two years,
right.
So it was almost like we kindof just like let open the
floodgates, so to speak, andhave been riding that wave for
the last year, like a year and ahalf.
Don Hansen (17:55):
That makes sense.
So creating videos for kind ofan already well-established
channel like FreeCodeCamp wasboot or backend banter, a
strategy to bring in traffic tobootdev.
Lane Wagner (18:11):
So backend banter I mean it's, i's, I was really
happy with.
You know how much traffic itgot, but like it's not going to
drive you know the amount oftraffic.
You need to get the revenuenumbers that we have been
putting up or the registereduser numbers right.
Um, to me, the real purpose ofback-end banter is to let people
(18:32):
know, like, who the hell isbuilding this thing right.
Like when people like take acourse, they want to know who's
behind it.
Like why should I trust thisperson?
Do they even know what they'redoing?
Do I like how they communicateright?
Do I like their teaching style?
And so, to me, the podcast wasa way to be like you know if
you're unsure about it or if youjust want to know who I am
(18:52):
before you like pay for anything, because I mean a lot of people
I shouldn't say a lot of peopleeveryone starts out on like a
free tier, free trial of bootdev and they're kind of in this
decision making phase of likewell, should I commit to a
membership and get all theinteractivity?
The podcast is a way to kind ofget to know the creator, and so
it was actually less of a playof you know, bringing people in
(19:14):
and more of a trust building forthe people that are already
sort of in the ecosystem.
Don Hansen (19:21):
That makes sense.
So let me just, I guess, helpclarify for me.
So you saw significant growth,so you built trust with the
users, which you know canindirectly provide some people
to actually sign up and convert,uh, through back-end banter.
But you saw the significantgrowth from creating free videos
(19:42):
on already well-establishedchannels, like free code camp.
Would you say, like that's thethe major marketing strategies.
Lane Wagner (19:48):
That helped that was the first big one.
That was like what got us outof the we are not growing to.
Now we're growing was a handfullike three um courses that we
made for Crico camp, and likeI'll just say they were not,
they were not low effort.
(20:10):
Uh, like I spent a month oneach of them, not like eight
hours a day for a month, butlike a few hours of every
working day for a month.
On all of those.
They're like eight hour, ninehour courses, and so it was like
a pretty big risk at the time.
So it was like I mean we didn'thave money.
(20:33):
Really.
We were like barely break even.
I had one employee like,honestly, most of the revenue we
were making was just going tohis paycheck, uh, and so it was
just like we got to trysomething and so we just put
everything that we could intothese courses and I mean we were
pretty we were noobs at makingvideos back then.
Um, luckily it worked out and II mean Quincy Larson from free
(20:54):
code camp is incredible, um, andhe really appreciated the time
and effort we put into it and hewas nice enough to publish them
, um, so, yeah, that worked outreally well and I will say, I
mean, we got lucky.
Youtube.
There's a lot of luck toYouTube, um, but like the video
that we published last year, itum, it's a walkthrough of our
how to get a job course.
(21:15):
It's like three million views,so this is like an incredible
amount of reach, um.
But again, you know, it took melike that.
One took me over a month to puttogether because I, I, I used
clips from the podcast in therefrom like guests, in fact, I
think, did I have?
Did I ask you for a clip?
Don Hansen (21:32):
I am in there.
You're in there.
Yeah, I'm famous now of you.
Lane Wagner (21:35):
It's like that one was so much work to put together
, but it did eventually pay off.
Don Hansen (21:40):
That was a really good video.
You did a good job with that.
Lane Wagner (21:42):
Thanks, appreciate it.
Don Hansen (21:45):
That's an interesting strategy because you
know a lot of content creatorsare really trying to figure out.
I think a lot of contentcreators are focused on building
content to be able to markettheir products and you know
that's just a common strategy ifyou want to go full time as a
content creator and you got toget that product out, but not a
lot of content creators haveachieved anywhere near the
success that you have.
And you know one thing that'sinteresting is always for me,
(22:08):
pricing, because sometimes I seedevs and content creators will
do like a bulk or not a bulkpricing, but like $95 for this
course and you essentially ownit right Versus a subscription
model.
What made you go with $50 amonth and that subscription
model?
Lane Wagner (22:24):
Yeah, um, and I'll even just to clarify for
everyone listening it's $50.
We have a $50 a month a monthtier, um, if you pay once every
month, so pay monthly.
And then it's like uh, 29 permonth if you pay for a year up
front, which is like discountedannual plans.
Um, we used to have a lifetime.
We can get into why I turnedthat off.
(22:45):
Uh, here in a minute, um.
But let me start with why Idon't just do the thing that a
lot of creators do, which ishere's my course.
It's ninety nine dollars.
Buy it once you have it.
To me, that's like static media.
So it's like if I were sellinga book or if I were selling a
single cut of a video course, Iwould use that pricing model.
(23:05):
It makes sense, right?
It's like I made this video.
I'm now selling this content toyou.
You can download it.
It's $99.
That's great.
Boot dev is not that at all.
Boot dev, the courses areupdated almost daily.
There's a team of nine of usand we get over 100 reports on
the individual lessons in thecourse every day and we're in
(23:31):
there updating them.
You know, reworking assignments, trying to make them clear,
trying to make the explanationsbetter, the challenges better.
So it's very much this likeliving product.
And then and then, of course,the other thing is on boot dev,
all of our content is alreadyfree, so the text, the videos,
all that stuff's just, I mean,you can just create a free
(23:53):
account and access all of it.
What you're paying for when youbuy a membership is the
interactivity, which part of itis the ability to run the code
in the browser and use thecommand line tool to check your
work.
Part of it also is the AIchatbot boots, which is not
cheap to run because it's backedby, you know, open AI and
anthropic, and so a subscriptionmodel is like the only thing
(24:15):
that makes financial sense.
It's like, you know, you getaccess essentially to chat GPT
through the boot dev site, aspecific, you know, version of
chat GPT.
That's kind of optimized forteaching the content, but it
can't really make sense with anyother monetization strategy.
Don Hansen (24:35):
Yeah, so the AI is named Boots, right?
Yeah, he's a bear Nice.
Lane Wagner (24:41):
Okay.
Don Hansen (24:42):
So I feel like you know, I've been paying attention
to AI being introduced into theeducational space with
developers and I feel like it'sa pretty controversial push.
I do see it being morecontroversial with building out
essentially an entire coursewith AI and maybe there's not a
lot of integrity, there's not alot of quality control over
(25:04):
what's being created.
Lane Wagner (25:05):
You're talking about, like generating a course
with AI?
Don Hansen (25:08):
And that's where I'm seeing a lot of the controversy
.
But you have an interestingangle with it where you are
using AI as a mentor.
Now I'm kind of curious aboutthe pros and cons of that and
like what you've noticed inreports and complaints or
anything like that, because Ithink my big concern is
hallucinations, you know,incorrect data that's leading
people in the wrong direction.
I would imagine that'shappening rarely, but can you
(25:31):
kind of just dive into yourexperience with launching that
the good and the bad?
Lane Wagner (25:36):
Yeah.
So I mean, like everyone else,I've been following generative
AI really closely ever sinceChad GPT launched.
The first thing I'll say isthat generating content with AI
educational content, liketalking, like lessons, like the
text or even scripts for videosor anything is dog water.
(25:57):
Like, if anyone's doing that,like their content shouldn't
even be ranking on Google, letalone like it's definitely not
good enough to be paid for, andthat's that's not like just a
philosophical stance, like we'vetested a lot, like you know
what you can actually do withgenerating content.
It's bland, it's not unique, itlacks real world use cases and
(26:19):
experiences and stories.
Um, it's really not good.
And the whole play for us withboo dev is like if we launch a
course, we want it to be likethe best course there is on that
subject.
Now, of course, not everyone isgoing to agree.
You know that our course is thebest course there is on that
subject.
Now, of course, not everyone isgoing to agree.
You know that our course is thebest on this, but like that's
our goal.
So we'd much rather publishfewer good courses than more not
(26:41):
as good courses.
I guess is the way I, what I'mtrying to trying to say.
So we don't generate contentwith AI.
I mean we.
We use it for various things,like, for example, I found that
it's really good at insertinglinks to documentation right,
like when I cite one of the Gostandard libraries things, it
knows the link to thatdocumentation.
(27:02):
It's really easy to insert inour markdown.
So it's made our lives easier.
Like we're able to producecontent a little more quickly
using it.
We're certainly not scared ofit, but we can't generate
content with it.
Boots is very different.
Boots is basically a chat GPTwindow built into the boot dev
platform and there's two thingsthat make it, in my opinion, way
(27:24):
better than just like havingchat GPT up in another window.
The first is he's trained onthe lesson, so he has context
for what you're trying toaccomplish and for our solution,
so he doesn't reallyhallucinate bad solutions
because he knows, like, theinstructor's solution and then
(27:45):
he's been trained to not give itto you.
So this is like.
The other value proposition ofBoots is he's been trained with
a bunch of examples on, like howto take where you're at and
what you're struggling with andask you questions about your
approach.
Like, oh hey, I see that you'redoing this on this line, like
(28:06):
that might be a problem for X, y, z reason.
Can you look into that Right?
So it's the Socratic method atthe end of the day.
But the goal is to have himguide you toward the solution
rather than just hand it to you,like.
Don Hansen (28:18):
I mean, that's what chat gpt does by default yeah,
you're right and I I think well,there's nuance in using ai's
mentor and that's the nuance.
You can't have.
It give you the solutions youneed to be able to critically
think on your own, but you canhave hints and steps towards.
You know the right direction,but you don't really learn when
you're given the solutions.
(28:38):
It's the same when you're justcopying and pasting from Stack
Overflow.
You know, even just like somepeople would justify copying and
pasting and then reading outwhat's being written, but you
still learn more thoroughly whenyou're writing it out yourself
and thinking through the actualsolution.
So I like what you've done withthat and I think it's an
interesting concept.
(28:59):
And so the context you know,sometimes you have that context
window that is limited, whichkeeps expanding with open AI,
but you're just kind ofresetting that context window
with some defaults, but the newproblem, the new solution, and
then you kind of don't need anyother context from other
previous lessons, right?
Lane Wagner (29:17):
For the most part, I'm trying to remember all
that's in the context window.
At the moment, like you said,the context window has gotten
very large.
Gpt-4.0 is like 128,000 tokensin the context window, oh wow.
It's epic now.
Yeah, it's gotten quite large,so like we're not really too
constrained on space, um.
But I think I think all we giveboots for context is like the
(29:39):
lesson you're on, the chapteryou're on, and then basically,
like you said everything in thatlesson, like here's the
solution, here's the currentstate of the student's code,
here's what the student's asking.
Um, use the socratic method andtalk like you're a you know
bear wizard I mean I wentthrough it before I.
Don Hansen (29:58):
I partnered with you I I thought it was pretty neat.
I liked him I'm glad.
Lane Wagner (30:01):
I mean and like you said, he does hallucinate
sometimes like it's still an llm.
Um, we just have a littledisclaimer at the bottom.
Of all his messages is like if,if you think there's a, if you
think this is suspect, like goto the discord and ask a human
like that's uh, our discord isis kind of the backup plan I
like that.
Don Hansen (30:19):
I think that makes your program pretty unique.
Um, what do you think is like aflaw about that, regardless of
whether you think you can solveit or not, like what's that?
Like one thing nagging in theback of your mind?
Lane Wagner (30:32):
That's a good question.
At the moment the big thing isthe lack of language choice.
So at the moment if you want todo boot dev, you learn computer
science basics in Python andthen you learn backend
development in Go.
And, as you mentioned at thebeginning of the show, our
(30:55):
philosophy is about teachingfundamentals first.
So you know our students thatcomplete the whole platform by
the end.
A lot of them have gone on toget jobs writing java or ruby or
whatever.
Um, because they're confidentenough to.
You know, pick up a framework inanother language within, you
know it just takes like a couplepersonal projects and they're
like good to go.
But for, like I'll say first,that's not.
(31:20):
That's obviously not as good asactually doing the like
back-end portion in, say, rubyor java.
If that's what you're going togo on and work in, like, that
would obviously be better.
And also that idea that, like,you can learn fundamentals in
one or two languages and go onto be a developer in a different
language.
It's obvious to developers Likewe know, that if we're really
(31:43):
interested in a language likeyeah, we can pick it up in a
month unless it's rust, then ittakes like seven lifetimes, but
like any other language.
You know, we can like pick itup fairly quickly if we
understand the concepts.
That's definitely not obviousto new programmers.
There's this idea that, likewhen you're a programmer, you
learn one language Like I'm aPython programmer and if I'm
going to learn another language,it's like learning another
(32:05):
natural language.
It's like I speak French andEnglish.
I can't be a German speaker.
It's like, well, actually, yeah, you can.
I can't be a German speaker.
It's like, well, actually, yeah, you can.
It's like really easy to learna third programming language
once you know two.
Don Hansen (32:20):
So anyways, I would say the big weakness is we want
to expand into other programminglanguages.
That makes sense.
And your focus still remainskind of on the foundation, which
a lot of courses that probablyare your competition seem to
lack.
A lot of courses are tosupplement, um, they're there to
, to supplement what computerscience degrees don't give you,
(32:41):
um, applicable skills withmodern frameworks, that kind of
let you hit the ground runningwith some positions at some
companies, um.
But when I was looking atstudies I did see I guess I'm
kind of answering the questionI'm going to give you.
Maybe you have a differentanswer but when I looked at
studies and I even back in theday when coding boot camps were
(33:05):
actually they had some depth toit.
They weren't just trying tospit out the last bit of profit
as kind of the industry is goingunder, bit of profit as kind of
the industry is going under.
I feel like they did a reallygood job at getting people to
hit the ground running andsupplementing what CS students
weren't capable of.
But CS had a really solidfoundation and it just wasn't
programming foundation, it wasCS concepts in general that make
(33:27):
you marketable even outside ofsoftware engineer positions.
But you know there are stillkind of like.
I think Bolt are really healthy, and if you have a long runway
to be able to try to get yourfirst developer job, you're
eventually going to do Bolt,you're going to build a solid
foundation and learn applicableskills, and it's going to set
you up for more success if youcan have that runway.
What made you decide, though,to highly focus on the
(33:52):
foundation?
Lane Wagner (33:53):
Yeah, my perception of coding bootcamps circa when
I started boot dev so around2020, um was like, as you
mentioned, they were doingbetter than.
But and this is this is veryanecdotal, so I'm sure you
actually know a lot more aboutthis than I do my perception as
(34:14):
a hiring manager, havinginterviewed, like some boot
bootcamp grads and I'm sure it'sskewed based on my geographic
location and all that kind ofstuff but was it?
They did teach fairly shallowlyIs that a word?
Like they didn't go too far indepth.
These are like 12 to 24 weekprograms and the students were
(34:35):
more successful than they arenow.
Again, this is just anecdotesperception, but not because the
boot camps were better.
I think it was just because themarket was easier.
Like you know, the market in2020 and 2021 for developers was
undeniably much better than2022, 2023, 2024.
Right, I'm biased and I'm stillof the opinion that development
(35:00):
skills are incredibly valuable,um, and that you know the
recessions, the tech recessionsthey come and go um, and you
know it's it's hard to time themarket.
So you know, don't worry toomuch about that um.
But yeah, my perception is onemore of the market has changed
and I think that it always was abetter idea to get a solid
(35:24):
foundation, because that was myfrustration interviewing boot
camp grads.
I don't think it takes that muchlonger to learn the basics
right.
I mean we're talking about likeall our marketing with boot dev
says we say it takes about ayear and I think that's true.
Like some people it'll go alittle faster, some people it'll
take longer.
(35:44):
But like you can learnfundamentals first, cs
algorithms, data structures,programming, design patterns,
how HTTP works, you can learnall of that in a year, as long
as the curriculum is set out ina way that makes sense and moves
(36:05):
smoothly so you're notconstantly like restarting.
Because my perception again hasbeen that a lot of people
getting into code they'reconstantly restarting.
It's like the tutorial hellprocess, right.
Restarting it's like thetutorial hell process, right.
And so if you can map out thislinear curriculum again very
hard to do, but if you can dothat then you can actually move
(36:27):
fairly quickly.
Don Hansen (36:31):
I think starting with the foundations is
incredibly important and it'sdoable and people shy away from
it, but I do believe it'sbecause courses are boring,
which I think does make bootdevvery unique.
Um and it it is hard to do tosupplement a cs degree which is
spitting out software engineersthat are going to be competitive
in a different way than you aswell.
(36:53):
And how do you supplement that?
Do you need to take everysingle course, including general
studies, that you're going togo through with an entire CS
degree?
No, but you do have tounderstand and I think even just
people getting into thisindustry you have to understand
that there's probably a lot moredepth to the foundation and
fundamental concepts that youprobably should start with,
because you're going to have aneasier time.
It is going to lengthen theamount of time it takes you to
(37:15):
become a developer.
But I think what I love aboutyour courses there are so many
courses spitting out people whocan kind of put together apps,
and there are even courses justsaying you know, just you know,
learn Nextjs and you're going tobe a full stack developer and
be hireable with all thesedifferent startups, and that's
just not the truth.
I've been paying attention to alot of the open positions and
people are hiring people with asolid foundation and it's a hard
(37:41):
thing to ingrain in newdevelopers because you have a
lot of content creators givingdifferent advice on how to get
in and how they got in in 2020and 2021.
So I like your focus and I thinkit's what makes bootdev strong,
but I'm kind of curious caneven be separate from bootdev.
(38:04):
What's your main frustrationwith aspiring backend developers
?
What do you feel like they justtruly need to hear the most.
If you could take that thoughtand shove it into their brains
so they lived it, what wouldthat thought be?
Lane Wagner (38:23):
I'm going to go a little bit more general than
backend developers, because mostof my frustrations are just
about what I'll consideraspiring developers in general,
and it's around expectationsetting and I blame our industry
, the ed tech and actually I'mnot just going to blame us.
You know what I'm not done.
(38:44):
As Dennis Reynolds would say,I'm frustrated with the way we
market computer science anddeveloper education, as well as
the way universities do it,because I think both of them, I
think there's issues everywhere.
Here's the take universities doit because I think both of them
, I think there's issueseverywhere.
Here's the take um, learning tocode and becoming a developer
(39:05):
for a while was extremelylucrative and very cushy job.
It's still an extremelylucrative, lucrative and very
cushy job if you're goddamn goodand like.
That's the difference.
There's a lot of people thatthink of becoming a developer as
this binary thing where, likeyou get your first job as a
(39:26):
developer and, like now you're adeveloper.
But there is a huge differencebetween developers that are paid
$400,000 a year to write reallyintense code that solves really
hard problems for companiesthat are making like handfuls of
money right, they have so muchcash they don't know what to do
with versus like you know, youknow how to put HTML and CSS on
(39:49):
a page for, like you know, alocal, a local chiropractor's
office or something like theseare two very fundamentally
different jobs, and so this isthe reason like and not to
disparage people that are, youknow, you know WordPress
developers, or HTML, CSS andWordPress, or I should say, and
(40:10):
like front end frameworks.
In my mind, like in thebusiness industry, I would
almost classify that type ofwork as like.
If you want to get paid reallywell, you almost have to start
specializing in marketing on topof just like web development
skills, right, Because it's notjust like, can you write some
HTML and CSS?
It's like you got to makesomething beautiful that
converts.
(40:31):
If what you're really passionateabout is programming and you
want to be a really goodprogrammer, then you have to be
a really good programmer so thatyou can get paid a lot of money
to work on complex you knowhard to fit in your head backend
systems that are servingmillions of requests, right?
So it's just an expectation oflike.
(40:53):
If you're going to get into theindustry, you really should
like it at least at some level.
I mean, I prefer to play Dota 2than to write code.
I still like to write code,though, and you've got to like
it to some degree and you've gotto go in with eyes wide open
that, if you're going to reallysucceed, if this is going to be
(41:14):
something again that makes you alot of money, where you're able
to demand really good lifestylebenefits from the companies you
work at like aim to be a top 10developer.
Like don't don't aim for, youknow, middle of the pack that's
the problem.
Don Hansen (41:30):
I mean like, wow, yeah, that's the problem with so
many aspiring developers.
It's that's the trick is gettingthem to see that, to want to be
that right, and maybe time andexperience, like getting some
exposure into the industry, cankind of give you opportunities
to meet good developers andyou're like I want to be like
(41:53):
him or her and like I aspire tobe that person, and so I'm going
to aim for that.
But, man, a lot of people doneed to hear that.
I meet so many people, peoplethat come into my live streams,
people that I mentored, wherethey've set the bar so low for
themselves and it's likesometimes it's self-confidence,
like they're not capable ofbeing a really good developer,
(42:15):
even one day not today, one dayday like they don't see
themselves as that.
But there are a lot of reallybrilliant developers that I
don't think have like incrediblyhigh iq above yours.
They just put in the effort,they put in a lot of time, like
almost everyone is capable ifyou enjoy it and you put the
(42:36):
damn time into it.
I wish more people understoodthat.
Lane Wagner (42:41):
And it's worth pointing out.
I mentioned this before like Iwouldn't say like I love
programming in the sense that,like again, that I'd rather
program in my free time than,like you know, play video games
or hang out with my family orsomething.
It's like that's not true.
But it's a virtuous cycle thatyou want to get yourself into
where, uh, as you get better atprogramming, you start liking
(43:04):
programming more, right, and asyou like programming more, you
start getting better atprogramming faster.
Uh, and that's not alwaysobvious when you start out,
because everything feels reallyhard.
Uh, everything feels reallyhard and you know you get burnt
out after two hours of bangingyour head on like one function
that's not working.
But it's worth noting that itdoesn't always feel that way,
like these days when I learn anew language.
(43:26):
It's just fun Because I havethat really foundational
knowledge and those years ofexperience where it's just like
oh, yeah, that's how that works,oh, that's cool.
I like how they designed this.
Like it's not this.
Like, oh, how, yeah, that's howthat works, oh, that's cool.
I like how they designed thislike it's not this.
Like, oh, how, how am I goingto write that?
Like why is it not working likeit does get a lot more fun as
it goes along.
(43:46):
So just I mean that's that'simportant to just understand,
that you will overcome thatfeeling of it's really hard and
that's making it not fun no,you're right, and like I mean, I
don't know how relatable thisis, but like, how do you build a
habit?
Don Hansen (44:01):
You just do it and then you build a habit.
You don't build a habitinitially, right, and I've I've
noticed that I've even peoplethat CSS is a really good
example, people that hate CSS.
I tell them all the time.
I'm like once you're good at it, you will like it.
But back, a lot of backenddevelopers will never believe me
, but I hated it for the longesttime and so many frontend
developers hated CSS and maybesome people still will.
(44:22):
That's fine, but I do feel likethere's so many aspects of
programming that get really funand addicting and you wake up
and you want to do it when yougive yourself time, and I think
some people just need to givethemselves time.
I think that's good advice, andI think some people just need
(44:43):
to give themselves time.
I think that's good advice.
So, five years down the road,what are you doing?
What does bootdev look like?
What does backend banter.
Lane Wagner (44:50):
Look like that's a good question.
I don't know.
I know that a lot of creators.
So it's a very like what I doday to day is a very creative
work which I enjoy.
So it's a very like what I doday-to-day is a very creative
work which I enjoy.
Um, like you know, writingcourses, basically recording
videos, um, building theplatform, like it's all really
fun stuff.
But I will say I am going likereally hard on it and I have
been for almost four years.
(45:11):
Uh, so like five years from nowI would love to still be going
hard, but, like, I guess whatI'm saying is I hope I don't
burn out at some point, becauseit's not.
It's not, uh, you know the samepace at which I was working at
my other jobs.
It's not just a standard nineto five sort of thing.
Um, so like, personally, Idon't know, uh, where I'll be.
(45:35):
I guess that just depends onhow, how my mental state hangs
on throughout the years, butwhere the product will be, I do
know where I want that to go.
I mean, the goal is to startwith back-end development and
make the best back-enddevelopment career path, so
cover everything within thecontext of back-end development
that we possibly can.
(45:55):
At the moment I'm writing acourse on static file servers.
It's like how to use AWS S3within the context of a web
server that's serving likevideos and, you know, streaming
stuff and all that good stuff.
So we have, we have a bunch ofstuff, a bunch of content we
have to make regarding back enddevelopment and then, like I
mentioned, I want to expand intoother programming languages.
(46:16):
So you know, you're not just.
You have the option essentiallyto learn the backend portion of
the learning path in either Goor TypeScript or Python.
That'll take a lot of work.
The good news is we organizeour concept or our courses by
concept.
So it's like functionalprogramming is a course, happens
to be in Python, but it'sfairly easy for us.
(46:36):
I should say.
You know, it's like maybe aquarter of the work or a fifth
of the work to take that and nowoffer it in a second
programming language.
It's like very similar conceptsbeing taught in every lesson,
just using a different syntax.
So that's like step number twois offered in multiple languages
, and then step number threewould be to branch out into
(46:57):
completely new career paths.
So we'd probably start withlike data engineering, data
analysis, devops and really tryto cover everything except front
end.
That's what it sounds like.
Don Hansen (47:12):
I love that when so there are different career paths
.
I've seen this.
So again, I've seen a lot ofcoding bootcamps go down
different paths and a lot ofcoding bootcamps the quality
tends to go down when theybranch way too far out of their
original career path and yourfocus kind of really honing in
on the backend.
(47:32):
Um, I would expect the qualityof your other paths to go down
when you start branching intofront end.
I've seen it so many times.
I'm sure you have a goodcurriculum, you have good
instructors, but a lot of thesecoding bootcamps are really good
or curriculum developers andthey just it, just when it
(47:53):
almost seems like your attentionis just split and you stop
caring about what truly you knowgot you motivated to build this
thing from the ground up andlike who you're trying to serve.
So I hope you never go frontend.
I truly do and let you know,let other people kind of tackle
the front end, but that that'sawesome.
Lane Wagner (48:13):
I think it's mostly a question of of focus, like
you said.
So right now, there's five ofus on like the product and
engineering side and we're justfocused on this backend
developer path, and two of usare boot dev graduates.
So two of the engineers workingon the team one of them did the
whole career path twice I mean,these are like top 0.1%
(48:36):
students, like absolutelyincredible.
Shout out to Matt and dan.
In fact, that was the one that,uh, introduced me to your
youtube channel uh, he waswatching.
Uh, he was watching some don thedeveloper, but uh, we're all
focused on that.
So if we're like, the more wespread out with content, we have
to add people and give them theprerogative of focusing on that
(48:58):
thing, which is fundamentallyhard to do.
So I agree, the quality doestend to go down as things grow,
which is why we're just going todo it slowly.
Don Hansen (49:08):
I like it.
So, for content creators anddevs that are thinking about
building their course and even,like actually me, who's thinking
about building a course um,what advice would you give us?
What advice would you wish youhad known, you know, when you
(49:28):
first started?
Lane Wagner (49:34):
the first.
The first thing I'll say islike I'm biased because I'm not
content creator first, coursesecond.
I'm course first, contentcreator second, which is a very
different way of kind of lookingat your.
You know, frankly, your likemedia business and my belief is
(49:56):
that if you're going to make acourse, you should do it because
you think there's somethingunique you're doing Right Again,
to go back to what I was sayingearlier, like there's so many
courses out there, you reallynot only does the world not need
just another course on X, likejust another course on react or
(50:19):
just another course on html, um,it's not just that the world
doesn't need that.
From like this, you knowphilosophical or like ethical
standpoint, it's like no, youwon't be able to sell it.
Like there's so many of those,uh yeah, it's probably just not
a good use of time.
So it's it's really honing onsomething unique and and for us
it's a little different becauselike yeah, there's a lot of
(50:41):
Python courses out there we tookthis angle of just building a
hyper interactive platform withall the gamification and stuff
is like kind of what made it orwhat makes it unique.
And if you are thinking aboutwriting a course and you are a
content creator and you do havea following.
I mean, we partner with contentcreators.
(51:01):
You know, primogen wrote boththe Git courses on bootdev, tj,
just finished our memorymanagement course.
So we do make most of ourcontent in-house, but we do sort
of selectively work with peopleto build stuff on platform.
There's a lot of caveats though.
For example, you know, if youbuild your own course and
(51:22):
self-publish, you have fullcontrol.
Obviously, if you build yourown course and put it on Udemy,
you have mostly full controlright.
So it's a video, you upload it.
We're kind of control freaks inthe sense that we do like heavy
reviews, we're constantlyupdating and maintaining um.
You know, since the primogenpublished his git course, we've
added lessons to it, uh, stufflike that.
(51:43):
So it's like um working with us.
You do give up a bit of control.
I mean, we'll say, of course,that it's all in the pursuit of
of quality and better materialat the end of the day, but it is
, you know it is a littledifferent okay, I think that's
really good advice.
Don Hansen (51:59):
I appreciate that yeah you're right, um, just from
my own thoughts.
I mean, I've reviewed so manycourses and there aren't a lot
of unique ones, and sometimesmaybe people need to sit on
their idea a little bit more,like, don't just build a course,
because that's the thing to Um,really sit on your idea and
(52:19):
flush that out, brainstorm andcause there are a lot of
opportunities.
Like a lot of people are stillstruggling as aspiring
developers, which means thereare a lot of opportunities to
catch their attention and dosomething unique where their
previous course didn't catchthat attention.
Um, so yeah, that's good advice.
Lane Wagner (52:37):
I'll just say so, yeah, that's good advice.
I'll just say there's one morething on that.
Um, yeah, and to get likereally scrooge mcduck about like
how this whole industry works,um, because I mean, your
audience is really smart.
I've seen some of your videoslike they, they kind of get how
this works and and I'll kind ofpull back the curtain a little
bit and talk a bit about how,like the content creation game
(52:58):
works.
Like when you have a followingon YouTube, the big following,
let's say, you know, 500,000views per video or a million
views per video.
Like you make money from ads onYouTube.
So your primary quote, unquotecustomer is whoever the hell is
buying ads on YouTube, which,like you, don't really have
control over YouTube, just feedsads.
Um, that doesn't monetize verywell.
(53:18):
Like, considering you'regetting a million views per
video, you're not actuallymaking all that much money
through just native AdSense,which is why so many creators
launch a course or sell aproduct, maybe partner with a
brand.
Right, it's why Mr Beast doesFeastables and Logan Paul does
Prime.
You can get more money byselling your own thing or by
(53:41):
partnering with a company thatsells something.
So here's kind of my again verybiased, very selfish take on how
I think about the codingeducation industry.
I want to keep working withgreat content creators who do
you know edutainment, likeinteresting technical content on
(54:01):
youtube, because I want tofocus on making courses.
I I don't want to really builda big youtube channel.
It's not what I'm passionateabout, it's not my core
expertise, so, like I just wantto build a really really really
good course platform, um, and Ilike partnering with creators
for basically the reverse reasonof that, because I I also get
(54:22):
frustrated when a creatorlaunches a course, what I would
consider to be like a low effortcourse, just because it's going
to do all day, every day, andand that's kind of what we're
trying to do.
More broadly speaking, in tech,youtube is, is, is, is make
(54:44):
really high quality courses andthen kind of partner with
creators on the distributionside.
Sorry to nerd out aboutbusiness, but that's uh, that's
the plan.
Don Hansen (54:52):
It's fascinating and so, like you know, if any other
content creators are watchingthis kind of a call to action
like what, do you have anycourses you're hoping to get
built?
I think the question is gonnabe like, well, you know, what do
you want from me?
What can I build?
Lane Wagner (55:05):
yeah, that's a great question.
So first thing I'll say is likewe're this is gonna make me
sound like an asshole, and maybeI am but like we're really
picky, uh, and and like I said,we're not udemy, so like udemy
will just like let anyone uploada course, um, and like they
have like 10 000 react courses Idon't know how many they
actually have, right but likeyou could just upload stuff, um,
(55:27):
for us.
It's.
It's a very deep partnership oflike we are writing this thing
with you, we're helping youproduce it, like all that kind
of stuff.
So it's like a it's a muchlonger and deeper conversation,
um, and we are buildingcurriculum.
So it's like what do we neednext?
So like, right now we're mostlygetting the go stuff converted
(55:48):
to typescript, um, and so we'reshipping like a new javascript
course and a new typescriptcourse.
But what I'll say is just likewe love working with creators,
whether you write a course forus or just we have like an
affiliate deal.
So anyone that's interested inworking with us hit us up, happy
to chat.
Maybe it makes sense to write acourse, maybe it doesn't, but I
(56:08):
at least like to chat witheveryone.
Don Hansen (56:10):
Okay, all right.
Well, I appreciate you sharingthat.
That's pretty much it, and Iappreciate you nerding out on
the business stuff.
You know, part of thisconversation was a little bit
selfish.
I was really curious how youran things.
And you know, and I've gottento, I follow you on Twitter and
I see what you post and you havea lot of integrity and you
truly do care about a lot ofpeople trying to just better
(56:31):
their lives, which is awesome.
It's another reason why Iwanted to talk to you again, but
I'm out of questions.
You gave a lot of information.
I appreciate that.
So you know, if people want toreach out to you and anything
else you want to share, wherecould people find you?
Lane Wagner (56:46):
Thanks, yeah, and likewise, by the way, like I
said, matt, our one of our starstudents on boot dev, now one of
our star employees, a huge fanof the channel, and he put me in
contact with you.
You do great stuff umappreciate that, yeah, um, if
anyone wants to reach, I meanobviously like boot dev is there
.
In fact you have a promo codelike use don's promo code, is it
(57:10):
?
Is it just don the developer?
That's it you encourage me tojust do don the dev.
But I stuck with don thedeveloper, yeah don the
developer, don't, don't typo it25 off, um.
So yeah, if you want to, if youwant bootdev, check it out, um.
But if you want to contact mepersonally, I will say I'm.
I'm getting worse and worseabout responding to dms as the
days go by, but the best placeis discord.
(57:33):
So bootdev slash community um.
Other than that, you know youcan shoot me a Twitter DM or a
LinkedIn DM.
Can't guarantee I'll respond,but if you make it interesting,
I probably will.
I get too many to respond toall of them, but I will.
I'll do my best.
Don Hansen (57:49):
Okay, that sounds good, all right.
Well, I know a lot of bootdevsaudience is probably watching.
Probably got served to some ofmy audience but, uh, for a lot
of aspiring back-end developers,um, you know, at the very least
, feel free to check out lane'scontent.
He brings on a lot of, a lot ofcontent critters, a lot of
really good developers andcontent critters.
You probably watch on it, youknow, a weekly basis.
(58:11):
But, um, yeah, lane, seriously,uh, stick around just for a
couple minutes, but thank you somuch for coming on again
absolutely thanks, don.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!