I’ve been taking a break from gainful employment, and filling the craving for tasks by doing Boot.dev courses.
My bio on the site currently reads:
Rusty CS masters grad from Canada, minor in psych to help understand HCI. Taking boot camp to cure 5 years confinement to OPS, and prolonged exposure to business 4GL and wishful approaches to AI.
I’ll unpack the snark in other posts. Today I thought I’d say a quick thanks to Boot.dev for their work, and to offer the perspective of an aging coder and what I’m getting from the online, gamified bootcamp experience.
I’m definitely impressed at the compactness of the course material. They don’t mess around, covering a metric ton of material in short bursts, striking a good balance between depth and breadth, all the while satisfying the desire to build things.
I went in thinking the gamification could throw me off, and while it does reward pace over depth, there’s no clock ticking except my own self-imposed deadlines.
I like they way the’ve incorporated an AI helper in the form of a talking bear wizard. The answers offered by ‘Boots’, available to subscribers for the price of baked salmon – a reward randomly tossed one’s way for finishing lessons – do a decent job of guiding without depriving the student of the chance to think and grow.
I still prefer to think for myself, and generally only call on the AI after I’ve passed a lesson’s automated tests. I managed to deprive the bear of salmon until a question about pointer-to-pointer dereferencing in C, which I felt was a good moment to concede that frustration does not always enhance learning. I’m still trying to work out the extent to which Boots (or any AI) can help grow a good brain rather than deprive it of the nourishment of a challenge. An online bootcamp is a fine place to discover your line in the sand.
I’m about halfway through the Back-end Developer curriculum (counting by number of courses). Some of the more enjoyable milestones were deepening my Python skills, learning Go, revisiting memory management in C (a strong taste of metal remains), and getting a fun introduction to Pygame.
I’ve also completed one AI Agent course and I’m almost done with a second one on Retrieval Augmented Generation. Together the two have helped me form a growing sense for where non-deterministic AI can fit in a world that still craves deterministic results.
Conclusion
It’s definitely worth the time for someone like me: an old coder who could use a boost of confidence.
You might find you’ll upset some of the newcomers who are after digital rewards and find your knowledge an unfair advantage. You can always find a deeper set of problems to solve, ones that toss you fewer fish, leaving the chart topping for new coders.
I’m definitely going to plug away at it. It has already fired up my imagination for solo projects, and the experience is certain to help me in any coding interview I might encounter.