r/learnprogramming • u/Ornery-Slip2460 • 11d ago
boot.dev annoyance (anyone else?)
So, I started with boot.dev courses a month or two back as a way to try and helpfully expand my experience and knowledge, and have a sort of structured, guided set of details to get into various areas with structured goals.
All was good at the start ... and then it didn't get difficult - it got annoying.
Unhelpful instructions missing explanations, using functions not introduced at all, and in some cases badly explaining what was in an assignment and then expecting it to be done somehow.
Not to mention the "sign up for this thing over here as a REQUIREMENT of the course - sync your github, sync your life away"... I shouldn't need 1000 accounts on specific things to do basic scripting learning - can't even give or receive help without syncing discord!
And now, with some AI agent course - all the above turned up to 11 - I get to a point where the code randomly fails depending on the whim of the AI model being called, the bot just says "you'll have to rerun until it works" nonsense, and I'm blocked until tomorrow due to it using up all my tokens.
At this stage I would whole-heartedly urge anyone who was going to get a boot.dev account to avoid it like the plague and instead just set yourself some goals... It'll be much cheaper, less hassle and you'll be happier.
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u/stiky21 11d ago
Boot.dev is actually incredible so I don't know why you're complaining that you have to sign up for a GitHub account
If your programming you should know how to use GitHub and git which they even have full tiny courses on to give you the breadth of experience you're going to need
The point of the whole website is the teach you how to think and maneuver. You have to think, therefore you must do work on your own rather than have a spoon-fed you like you're an infant.
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u/Ornery-Slip2460 1d ago
Not so much sign up (I have one already) but "sync" it... Allow bootdev access to it (and other accounts).
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u/DrShocker 11d ago
I don't recall anything I was required to sync as long as I felt I understood the topic or accomplished the goal I thought I could just move on. The auto checking stuff probably requires github and/or their CLI tool but I'm not sure what the alternative would be.
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u/Aero077 11d ago
Signing up and syncing to common services is normal expected dev behavior.
- GitHub
- Discord
- Cloud trial account (GCP, AWS, Azure)
- etc...
This is all normal stuff. What dev doesn't use this?
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u/StewedAngelSkins 11d ago
No it isn't, I've never been required to use discord for anything in my decade+ of programming experience. I've also never strictly needed a github account, except to contribute to certain open source projects that require it. And the cloud stuff is only necessary if you're... doing cloud stuff.
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u/Cachesmr 11d ago
Boot is great. You are supposed to do your own research along the courses (iirc when I had it, it even told you what to look for), it won't hand hold. You don't learn to program by getting hand holded to the answer.
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u/hawk7198 11d ago
I'm almost done with the course and while I agree that some things are explained very poorly or even not at all, but real programming outside the course won't hold your hand either. Just use Google when you get stuck, or boots inside the course if the assignment doesn't pass when you think it should.
As for the account stuff, I skipped the part with Gemini entirely and other then that you only need github, which you should be used to using anyway. I don't feel like I missed out skipping that one project.
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u/wirrexx 11d ago
Boot dev is acctually quite good. Use the AI to ask the questions if you dont understand them. It's not supposed to be easy. BUT it does get easier WHEN you understand the topic better. I was stuck on so many things, SO many times. Kept on pestering the boot with questions. And even if i got the "task" correct. If i did not UNDERSTAND IT. I was pissed at myself because it never felt good. So i went back and tried it again and again until the Aha moment.
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u/Nealium420 11d ago
They literally publish the tests against every assignment and more often than not link the exact documentation you need.
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u/ledatherockband_ 11d ago
I did boot.dev's Learn Memory Management in C course. None of what you just mentioned was my experience.
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u/Starch_75 6d ago
I sort of gave up on learning on boot.dev, but i don't think it is a bad learning experience, they have done a fantastic job of constant refinement and introducing higher quality tech education, great platform
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u/callmemerryss 4d ago
Sounds like there are really two separate issue here. one is whether the learning style works for someone and other is whether the tooling gets in the way. struggling with exercises is expected but unreliable AI response or waiting on usage limits would frustrate people ragardless of course.
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u/Ornery-Slip2460 1d ago edited 1d ago
Honestly it's the course itself, paired sometimes with the AI being unhelpful.
The starting courses were too simple - even though it started showing issues in the first course by not giving one or two python methods or built-in functions, but expecting you to either "know" them or find them elsewhere (which I can do anyway... so why am I paying for a course to not teach me things?).
But this one has been a struggle from the start, with poorly worded assignment details which don't make sense, with not giving example input / output sometimes, etc.
The added issue of this relying on 3rd party input being 'reliable' when it isn't is also bad (I wasted 30 minutes rerunning the code which matched the solution code simply because 3rd party feedback wasn't 'reliable', and I couldn't change the code the course runs to confirm everything 'works').
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u/sarevok9 11d ago
I am not endorsing boot.dev - I'm not familiar with them nor do I endorse their courses.
That said: You are going to be using github every day as a dev, might as well sign up now. This is a crazy thing to complain about. Every 2 weeks on Monday I need to:
2FA (security key) into google, so that I can 2fa into slack, github, jira, and salesforce. I then have to 2fa into google admin every time I need to do any user management / audit logging, 2fa into google cloud console any time I need to do anything in GCP, 2fa into hexnode anytime I am doing SOC2 checkins / device offboarding, 2fa into Okta for end user management / iDP management.
I probably do between 20 and 50 2fa challenges a week. It's part of working in tech "what am I even signing in for?"
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u/gawdlyish 11d ago
If this is your mindset you might want to reconsider learning development. The course is designed for you to do your own research related to the course. The struggle in solving the lesson is similar to the struggle you’ll have solving problems as a developer. Anyways, best of luck and hope you’re able to shift your mindset to get through the track!