Getting started with the AVR-DB on a breadboard

I have bought a couple of 28 pin AVR128DB28 chips to have a play with when I get some spare time (!). I am a bit confused after reading the thread:

No connection with diy emontx4

where the AVR128 had to have a bootloader uploaded before the user program would run. I can’t see that mentioned explicitly in the blink example above, or have I missed it?

I have done some programming using the atmega328 (arduino uno etc) before, but the all chips/boards that I used had the bootloader pre-installled. I guess that a new AVR128DB28 chip will be blank though.