Published on: 2024-1-26
Written by Nathan Pulver
Intro
I started learning on boot.dev after hearing recommendations from ThePrimagen and TJ via their YouTube channels and twitch streams. I have been programming in python for close to six years. All of the work I have done has been related to scientific computing, not any sort of software development. As I have gained experience writing code, I really started to fall in love with it but felt I was lacking a lot of fundamental knowledge to keep up with what many developers talk about. This is why boot.dev stood out to me. Starting from the advertising they focus on fundamentals. I also really like that they are not advertising things like “get a tech job in 2 weeks”. As a PhD student, I am fully aware that there is no way to thoroughly learn things in that amount of time. So I signed up.
Thoughts so far
I really like it. I skipped the python intro course because I am very well versed with the syntax of python. I started with the OOP course. Although I knew the syntax of writing classes in python, I never did it. It always seemed like it took too much planning when all I was doing for the most part was calculations and plotting. I think the course taught OOP well, not only in python but the concepts of it as well. I just finished the functional programming course, and it was much harder for me. That being it was a lot of fun, and I am certain I learned a lot in just these two courses. Next up is the data structures and algorithms course. As you can see from these first three courses, they practice what they preach with the focus on fundamentals. This is exactly the sort of learning I was hoping to get. It is also a lot of fun to level up and gain achievements. They are clearly going for a gamified learning model. If that is something you don’t really like then you can mostly ignore it, but I find it quite fun.
Would I recommend boot.dev?
Yes.