Podcast · Tech & Science

Backend Banter

The only podcast dedicated to backend development, technologies, and careers. Lane Wagner, the founder of Boot.dev, interviews successful backend engineers to get their takes on various trends, technologies, and career tips for new backend developers. Golang, Python, JavaScript, and Rust are the…

New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 1 hr 4 min
Latest: 31 Mar 2025
Language: English

Latest episode

31 Mar 2025 · 1 hr 8 min

The Tools Are Smarter. Are You? ft. YK Sugi | S02 E12

Today we welcome YK Sugi—engineer, educator, and the mind behind CSS Dojo—for the final episode of season two. We talk about his journey from YouTube dev tutorials to building one of Sourcegraph’s most-used AI tools, and how the role of DevRel has changed (and in some cases, disappeared). YK also breaks down how senior engineers are actually using AI, why fundamentals still matter, and how Agent Chat was born during a company hackathon. If you’re curious about AI devtools, the future of DevRel, or just want to hear how a former YouTuber accidentally shipped a flagship feature—this one's for…

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Earlier episodes 29 most recent

24 Mar 2025 · 1 hr 14 min

How to Win at Learning ft. Quincy Larson | S02 E11

In this episode, we sit down with Quincy Larson, founder of Free Code Camp, to explore his incredible path from high school dropout to influential tech educator. Quincy shares his unconventional journey — from living in his car and working fast food jobs to building one of the most impactful coding education platforms in the world. We discuss the power of self-learning, the evolution of coding education, and the philosophy behind building meaningful skills. Quincy also dives into his productivity habits, structured routines, and why he prioritizes lifelong learning over traditional memories.…
17 Mar 2025 · 1 hr 4 min

Mitchell Hashimoto: From Terraform to Ghostty | S02 E10

Today we welcome Mitchell Hashimoto, co-founder of HashiCorp and creator of Ghostty, a new terminal emulator built in Zig. In this episode, Mitchell shares the story behind Ghostty, how his curiosity about terminals evolved into a full-fledged project, and why Zig became his language of choice. We also dive into Ghostty’s unique features, the role of libghostty, and why Mitchell believes native-feeling apps are essential for developer experience. Plus, we explore his insights on computer science education, dynamic linking, and what really matters when learning to code. If you’re into…
S2 · E9 · 10 Mar 2025 · 48 min

Vercel’s Big AI Bet. ft. Malte Ubl | S02 E09

Today we welcome Malte Ubl, CTO of Vercel, to discuss the evolution of frontend development and the role of AI in shaping modern engineering workflows. Malte dives into V0, Vercel's innovative tool for generating frontend code using AI, and explains how it empowers developers—especially backend engineers—to build full-stack applications. We also explore the concept of verticalization in engineering roles, the challenges of balancing innovation with infrastructure, and how AI is redefining productivity in tech. Learn back-end development - https://www.boot.dev Listen on your favorite podcast…
S2 · E8 · 3 Mar 2025 · 54 min

Build skills, not degrees. ft. Madison Kanna | S02 E08

Today we welcome Madison Kana—a self-taught dev who defied the traditional path. From dropping out and navigating a world of homeschooling to launching the Code Book Club, Madison transformed her unconventional journey into a thriving community of coders. In this episode, she shares how bypassing the typical education route fueled her passion, the real challenges of learning on your own, and the power of mentorship in building a dynamic tech career. If you’re ready to break the mold and carve your own path in software development. Learn back-end development - https://www.boot.dev Listen on…
S2 · E7 · 24 Feb 2025 · 1 hr 14 min

Roll your own auth or you’re ngmi. ft. Dreams of Code | S02 E07

This time Elliot from @dreamsofcode joins us to talk about building his own course platform we dive into why he chose to go custom, the tech stack behind his platform, and the philosophy of building vs. buying in software. We also discuss the challenges of teaching programming, the role of AI in development, and what it really takes to create a great online course. If you're into coding, education, or the intersection of both, this one's for you! Learn back-end development - https://www.boot.devListen on your favorite podcast player: https://www.backendbanter.fm Elliott's Youtube:…
S2 · E6 · 17 Feb 2025 · 1 hr 5 min

Programming Music with Sonic Pi feat. Sam Aaron | S02 E06

Today we bring Sam Aaron, the creator of Sonic Pi, a free code-based music creation and performance tool that lets you use simple code to turn your computer into a fully networked live coding music studio! It is also used to engage students in computer science and programming through music creation! In this episode, we explore the origins of Sonic Pi, its deep connection with Raspberry Pi, and how it enables live coding for music creation, starting from it's Ruby-based language features, we discuss how Sonic Pi has evolved, the challenges of maintaining it as a sustainable open-source…
S2 · E5 · 10 Feb 2025 · 1 hr 7 min

KRAZAM Unfiltered feat. Ben Burke | S2 E05

Today, we bring a very special guest, one whose face you might recognise, one that appears on your homepages with a sporadic video and seemingly disappears. His name is Benjamin Burke, or simply Ben, he’s the co-creator of KRAZAM, a channel that consists of sketches that combine grotesque and absurdist humor with technological anxiety, satirizing the tech industry and the modern alienation of the corporate life in general. In this episode, which admittedly is a bit different from the usual, we’ll focus on KRAZAM and its origins, creative process, and what future plans and ambitions the duo…
S2 · E2 · 3 Feb 2025 · 1 hr 20 min

Does ADHD really make programming harder? ft. Chris Ferdinandi | S2 E04

Lane chats with Chris Ferdinandi—creator of Go Make Things and ADHD for the Win—a frontend dev, educator, and all-around expert in making JavaScript (and learning) simpler. Chris has built a career helping devs cut through the noise, level up their skills, and embrace ADHD-friendly ways to stay focused and productive. We dive into his journey from discovering his own ADHD to reshaping how people learn to code. We talk about why so many devs have ADHD, how gamification can actually help (when done right), and how today’s tech is messing with our attention spans. Plus, we get into the…
S2 · E3 · 27 Jan 2025 · 1 hr 10 min

Why You Need To Stop Worrying About AI feat. Danny Thompson | S2 E03

We’re joined by Danny Thompson, currently Director of Technology at This Dot Labs and technical leader and organizer of the Dallas Software Developers Group, where he fosters vibrant local tech ecosystem through workshops, cohorts, and meetups. With a passion to help others learn and find jobs, Danny shares his stories and insights that he gained throughout his extensive and fascinating career! From working as a cashier to now giving talks and organizing meetups for which people fly out to attend, Danny talks about how he got into coding in the first place and his progression, his advice to…
S2 · E2 · 20 Jan 2025 · 1 hr 12 min

Everyone is doing memory management wrong. feat. Ryan Fleury | S2 E02

This week on Backend Banter, we’re joined by Ryan Fleury, a talented game developer currently working with Epic Games on their Rad Debugger project. Ryan shares his journey from building games to creating powerful developer tools, offering insights into arenas, memory management, and the fascinating world of programming from the ground up. In this episode, we dive deep into memory management, exploring the differences between stack, heap, and arenas, and how they shape modern development. We discuss the trade-offs of various allocation strategies, the magic of pointer stability, and how…
S2 · E1 · 13 Jan 2025 · 1 hr 23 min

Is Elixir the Future? feat. José Valim | S2 E01

We're back for Backend Banter Season 2, and we bring a very special guest, José Valim, the creator of the Elixir Programming Language, one of the most popular and loved functional programming languages of today. (Fun fact: it's used in production at Discord). We cover the nitty-gritty of the language, ranging from simple topics such as the decision behind not making Elixir be statically typed, into the more complex cross-machine communication. We go over how Elixir's features compare with those of other languages, work habits of today's developers, José's own day-to-day development, and a…
2 Sep 2024 · 1 hr 15 min

#069 - Season Finale: The Boot.dev Origin Story w/ Allan

Today, we bring you the final episode of the first season of Backend Banter! It’s a wrap up for now. With 69 episodes behind us, we want to tell you the story of Boot Dev and how far we’ve come from our beginnings, and for that, we bring Allan Lires, the first official employee and the second person to work on our platform! We’re going to cover our entire timeline, achievements, hardships, how Lane and Allan were able to go all-in on building Boot Dev and our visions and plans for the future. Learn back-end development - https://boot.dev Listen on your favorite podcast player:…
26 Aug 2024 · 1 hr 13 min

#068 - Should you trust tech influencers? feat. Charles The III

Today we welcome Chuck Carpenter aka Charles The 3rd, co-host at Whiskey Web and Whatnot. As two content creators in the tech scene, we discuss if and how celebrity developers and tech influencers are a good thing for the community, how we should be careful when choosing technologies based on influencers’ opinions, why so many people nowadays want to speedrun their whole career and how that could be self-sabotage, and a lot more! Learn back-end development - https://boot.dev Listen on your favorite podcast player: https://www.backendbanter.fm Whiskey Web and Whatnot: https://whiskey.fm/…
19 Aug 2024 · 59 min

#067 - How to Be Better than 96.487% of Developers

In today’s episode, we bring back Aaron Francis. If you haven’t watched our previous episode with him, he is a software developer, fellow content creator and co-founder of Try Hard Studios. In the past he’s been an accountant at a Big 4 but now he focuses on Laravel, web development and all things business and video. This episode will step away from the usual tech focused content and we’ll talk a bit more about the business side of things, how you have to balance entertainment and education when creating courses, Aaron’s High Performance SQLite course, building a personal brand through the…
E67 · 12 Aug 2024 · 55 min

#066 - CSS Is The Hardest Programming Language

In today’s episode, we bring Adam Argyle, a CSS Dev Rel at Google, content creator, co-host at CSS Podcast, Bad At CSS Podcast and host of GUI Challenges. He’s also the creator of a bunch of tools and utilities for the front-end. We’re going to touch on a lot of hot topics, regarding the difficulty and power of CSS, how programmers most of the time underestimate and dismiss it as something trivial when in reality it’s one of the hardest things to master in the programming world. We also go over AI, the barriers between designers and developers and a bunch of other topics. Learn back-end…
E66 · 5 Aug 2024 · 56 min

#065 - I Quit Voice Coaching for Typescript feat. Matt Pocock

In today’s episode, we welcome Matt Pocock, an educator, content creator and engineer who used to be a voice coach. Now, he teaches Typescript on his YouTube channel and is building Total Typescript, the most comprehensive TypeScript course available out there. We talk about his transition from a completely unrelated field into tech, the importance of great communication, TypeScript’s future, AI tooling and job hunts! A lot more else is covered in this video, so get cozy and tune in into this gem of an episode! Learn back-end development - https://boot.dev Listen on your favorite podcast…
29 Jul 2024 · 1 hr 4 min

#064 - You’re doing networking wrong feat. Lawrence Lockhart

In today’s episode, we welcome Lawrence Lockhart, a former hospitality manager turned full stack software developer. Apart from his tech job, he’s also a developer advocate, a teaching assistant at a coding bootcamp and a tech meetup leader, so you know he spends a lot of his time helping others build and transfer their existing skills into tech, being a powerful voice in the tech space for upcoming developers. Today we talk briefly about how he managed to switch from hospitality to tech, and how that wasn’t as easy as a lot of people online make it out to be, the importance of local and…
22 Jul 2024 · 1 hr 3 min

#063 - I was fired for using HTMX

In today’s episode, we bring Spiro Floropoulos, a senior developer and architect with over 20 years of experience. This episode is an unusual one, as Spiro recently got laid off due to a bizarre chain of events that involved HTMX, overworking, and technical debt. But we’ll learn from this story, as we want to shed some light on how situations that Spiro described could be avoided, namely how the tech industry is obsessing over developer experience and why that’s detrimental, why abstractions should be teaching you the technology as opposed to just doing the work for you, why you should be…
E63 · 15 Jul 2024 · 59 min

#062 - Declaring War Against the Frontend feat. Sam Selikoff

In today’s episode, we go to war with Sam Selikoff, co-host of the Frontend First podcast, and specialist on everything Frontend related. We have an amazing conversation where we discuss Sam’s journey, as he also did some backend work in the past, we talk about abstractions, what JavaScript is doing differently from other languages and frameworks, why the frontend should be driving the backend and not the other way around, and finish it off with a discussion about RSCs (React Server Components). Learn back-end development - https://www.boot.dev Listen on your favorite podcast player:…
E62 · 8 Jul 2024 · 1 hr

#061 - Forget SQL, use Typescript feat. Thomas Ballinger

Today we bring Thomas Ballinger, a developer at Convex, an open-source backend for application builders. We will be discussing mainly databases, and why at Convex they use Rust and Typescript. We'll also talk about systems scalability, infrastructure and go over different practices regarding abstractions Learn back-end development - https://www.boot.dev Listen on your favorite podcast player: https://www.backendbanter.fm Convex: https://www.convex.dev/ Thomas' X/Twitter: https://x.com/ballingt Thomas' Website: https://ballingt.com/ Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 00:33 Thomas' background 02:29…
E61 · 1 Jul 2024 · 1 hr 14 min

#060 - Adam Elmore: IndieHacker Extraordinaire

Today we bring anothe returning guest, Adam Elmore! An AWS Hero, Teacher and fellow content creator! You might notice today's talk is a bit different, as we don't cover too much technical details but we do cover a lot of other interesting topics that permeate our everyday lives, such as kids and family time, religion and purpose in life... But don't worry, we also share some hot takes on indie hackers, business models of education platforms and finally content creation and how it can help you propel your career! Learn back-end development - https://www.boot.dev Listen on your favorite…
E60 · 24 Jun 2024 · 1 hr 4 min

#059 - The Internet == AWS? feat. James Q Quick

In today's episode, we bring back James Q Quick. Last time we talked about his best tips to land your first ever job as a developer. Today we talk about James' new startup and how he manages all his new tech adventures with being a parent and also provides some helpful insight as to why having an audience and personal connections in the industry is beneficial - but not strictly necessary to succeed. We also talk about AWS, abstraction and the current (healing) state of layoffs, so don't lose hope if you're demotivated in your job search. Learn back-end development - https://www.boot.dev…
E59 · 17 Jun 2024 · 55 min

#058 - Stop Making Private Variables feat. BadCop

In today's episode, we bring back BadCop! Since last episode, she joined Boot.dev's team and is now writing courses with us! Today we will be discussing the approaches to writing good educational material, Bash (of course, duh), working outside cloud solutions, SSH, NAS systems, workflows with different editors and cultural shifts in different areas of programming. Enjoy! Learn back-end development - https://boot.dev Listen on your favorite podcast player: https://www.backendbanter.fm BadCop's Twitter: https://x.com/badcop_ BadCop's Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/badcop_ Timestamps: 00:00…
E58 · 10 Jun 2024 · 59 min

#057 - AI Bros Suck.. feat. Ken Wheeler

In today's episode, we welcome Ken Wheeler, a dope programmer, who creates cool projects and just gives them away for free, helping thousands of developers worldwide, a based beatmaker and just in general a cool person. In this episode, we talk about AI, React, OCaml, why stressing over specific frameworks is not worth it, advice for new developers, HTMX, SPA's and a LOT of other stuff, so stay tuned! Ken's X/Twitter: https://x.com/ken_wheeler Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction 00:25 Do you hate AI? 02:10 How diffusion works 17:47 First impressions with writing Go 18:29 Where's the line between…
E57 · 3 Jun 2024 · 1 hr 18 min

#056 - Maybe Programmers are Just Bad feat. Casey Muratori

In today's episode, we welcome Casey Muratori, a seasoned programmer who specializes in game engine research and development who is currently working on a narrative game about organized crime in the 1930s in New York. And oh boy, is this episode packed with valuable knowledge! In this talk, we go over the differences between different job positions in the Game Development Industry and how it compares to the Web Development arena, as well as dive deep on the notions of technical knowledge, is it all useful or is some of it just a waste of time? We talk about bloated systems, how we already…
E56 · 27 May 2024 · 58 min

#055 - Talking Go with the Go God feat. AnthonyGG

In today’s episode, we bring AnthonyGG, a highly requested guest, a Go developer with over a decade of experience with Golang and a fellow content creator. This episode will be all around Web Development with Go - from how Anthony started writing code with Go and why he chose this language, to tooling, migrations, integrations with databases, generics, Go job interviews and much, much more! Learn back-end development - https://boot.dev Listen on your favorite podcast player: https://www.backendbanter.fm Anthony's Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@anthonygg_ Anthony's Twitch:…
E55 · 20 May 2024 · 1 hr

#054 - CS Programs Should NOT Teach Git feat. ThePrimeagen

Today, we bring back a dear guest and friend of the podcast, ThePrimeagen! Now Ex-Netflix engineer who turned his full focus to content creation surrounding software engineering and tech. In today's episode, we talk about his new Git course on boot.dev, where he shares motivations on why he decided to write a course on Git, how he incorporates it into his workflow and shares some hot takes regarding today's tech education landscape, his opinion on bootcamps, colleges, and what his ideal way of teaching computer science is. To finish off, he shares some of his exciting new ventures, namely a…
E54 · 13 May 2024 · 51 min

#053 - Go isn’t secure?!? feat. Low Level Learning

In today's episode, we welcome Low Level Learning, a fellow programmer and content creator. With over 500k subscribers and his own course where he teaches low level programming topics, he came on the podcast to talk about what he knows most: C, low level concepts, AI, as well as share some of his own developer experiences and preferences that he garnered over the years. Learn back-end development - https://boot.dev Listen on your favorite podcast player: https://www.backendbanter.fm Low Level Learning’s Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/LowLevelTweets Low Level Learning's Youtube:…
E53 · 6 May 2024 · 57 min

#052 - AI Generates 90% of My Code

In today’s episode, we welcome Natalie Pistunovich, host of the Go Time podcast, OpenAI Ambassador and Google Developer Expert for Go. She advises companies on how to make the most of AI and adopt it properly and also teaches the Cloud and Infrastructure course for B.Sc. students at the HTW Berlin. In this episode, we talk all about AI driven development and how is Go one of the best languages suited for code generation, the future of LLM’s and how can we boost the average developer’s job with AI, creating custom GPT’s, changes in the area of AI Chips, and a lot of other fascinating topics.…

About Backend Banter

Backend Banter is a English tech & science podcast from Boot.dev. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.

Publisher: Boot.dev
Language: English
Category: Tech & Science
New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 1 hr 4 min
Latest episode: 31 Mar 2025
Feed: RSS — paste into any podcast app
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1688115203
Website: boot.dev
Rights: Boot.dev

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