Stay ConnectedThe official podcast of the freeCodeCamp.org open source community. Each week, founder Quincy Larson interviews developers, entrepreneurs, and professors. You’ll learn all about how to build your skills and accelerate your career in tech.
Learn to code with free online courses, programming projects, and interview preparation for developer jobs: https://www.freecodecamp.org
Copyright: © https://terms-of-service.freecodecamp.org/
On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Tim Ruscica, the software engineer and prolific programming teacher behind the Tech with Tim YouTube channel. He's also developed courses on freeCodeCamp's YouTube channel.
We talk about: - How Tim managed to get a $70k salary by hacking his way into a Microsoft internship when he was just 19 - How he learned computer architecture as a kid by playing Minecraft - Lessons he learned from a failed tech startup - Why he recommends Python as a first programming language. "It's the least overwhelming thing to get your hands dirty."
Can you guess what song I'm playing in the intro?
Also, I want to thank the 11,133 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
Links we talk about during our conversation:
- The classroom montage from Real Genius that Quincy mentions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB1X4o-MV6o
- One of Tim's mock coding interview videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Q_oYDQ2whs
- Tim's course: https://techwithtim.net/dev
On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Yifan Mai, a Senior Software Engineer on Google's TensorFlow team who left the private sector to go do AI research at Stanford. He's the lead maintainer of the open source HELM project, where he benchmarks the performance of Large Language Models.
We talk about: - Open Source VS Open Weights in LLMs - The Ragged Frontier of LLM use cases - AI impact on jobs and our predictions - What to learn so you can stay above the waterline
Can you guess what song I'm playing in the intro? I put the entire cover song at the end of the podcast if you want to listen to it, and you can watch me play all the instruments on the YouTube version of this episode.
Also, I want to thank the 10,993 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
Links we talk about during our conversation:
- Yifan's personal webpage: yifanmai.com
- HELM Leaderboards: https://crfm.stanford.edu/helm/
- HELM GitHub Repository: https://github.com/stanford-crfm/helm
- Stanford HAI Blog: https://crfm.stanford.edu/helm/
On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Adam Stachoviac and Jerod Santo co-hosts of The Changelog – the longest-running software podcast in world. They interview devs about Open Source projects, and they also have a weekly news episode that I always listen to. 5 years ago, Quincy interviewed them for their 10th anniversary episode, and now he's back catching up on what they've been doing for the past 5 years.
We talk about: - How open source is changing - Open data and open LLM models - Self-reliance and self-hosted infrastructure - The business of running a developer community
Can you guess what song I'm playing in the intro?
Also, I want to thank the 10,993 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
Links we talk about during our conversation:
- Honeypot episode Adam mentions: https://changelog.com/podcast/557
- Steve Yegge episodes Quincy mentions: https://changelog.com/podcast/549
- Open Source Civilization episode Jerod mentions: https://changelog.com/podcast/428
On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Dorian Develops. He's a software engineer and prolific YouTube creator.
Dorian grew up in the Little Havana neighborhood of Miami. He's the child of a single mother that arrived as a refugee from Cuba. After a rough childhood and dropping out of high school in 9th grade, Dorian eventually made a living as a valet car parker in Las Vegas. It was here that he realized he needed to make changes for the sake of his family's future.
Dorian taught himself to code using freeCodeCamp and other free learning resources, and has since gotten several 6-figure jobs as a web developer.
We talk about:
- How Dorian survived his 20s by waiting tables and parking cars in Las Vegas
- How he taught himself to code using free learning resources and built his network through months of attending local developer meetups
- How he's worked as a remote developer so he and his kids can travel the world
- And how he's 1 year into his recovery from a lifetime of drug and alcohol addiction
Can you guess what song I'm playing in the intro?
Also, I want to thank the 10,993 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
Links we talk about during our conversation:
- Vagabonding book by Rolf Potts: https://rolfpotts.com/books/vagabonding/
- A documentary on "Advantaged Play" in Blackjack that Quincy mentions. [Note: I don't gamble and I don't condone gambling. Still, this is still an excellent video that developers interested in information security should consider watching]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nO6aPOkCt84
- A recent HTML tutorial by Dorian: https://youtu.be/sWYdumJckMw?si=nB8j5d9WQR5u5_Mb
- Dorian's video about his journey to sobriety: https://youtu.be/pGoeG5aY3S0?si=aanGEowSfWd-runm
- Dorian's video about his love of Brazillian Jujitsu but how it's left him with permanent injuries: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAHPG66H000
On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Tadas Petra. He's a software engineer and a Senior Developer Advocate at Agora.io. After learning embedded development in university, he switched to building mobile apps. He's gone on to build dozens of mobile apps and create tutorials to help other devs learn Flutter and other mobile dev tools.
We talk about: - Immigrating to Chicago from Lithuania - The Computer Engineering he studied in school, and how it's different from building consumer mobile apps - His transition from Senior Dev to YouTube creator to Developer Advocacy - The overlap between mobile dev and web dev, and what he's learned from each
Can you guess what song I'm playing in the intro?
Also, I want to thank the 10,943 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
You can listen to the podcast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Be sure to follow the freeCodeCamp Podcast there so you'll get new episodes each Friday.
Links we talk about during our conversation:
Tadas's History of freeCodeCamp video (20 minute watch): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5n1-hD-x5g
Tadas's video about how to control the lights in your house with Flutter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eib_62D-kSA
Tadas's course platform for learning cross platform app development with Flutter: https://www.hungrimind.com/
On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Kamran Ahmed. He's a software engineer and founder of Roadmap.sh, which has skill tree roadmaps for lots of developer fields, such as DevOps. As a teacher, he's also a Google Developer Expert and a GitHub Star.
We talk about:
- Kamran's tips for finding the right open source projects to contribute to - The story behind Roadmap.sh, his popular developer website - Other specialized open source Kamran has built over the years - How Kamran became a Google Developer Expert and GitHub Star
Can you guess what song I'm playing during the intro?
Also, I want to thank the 10,922 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
Links we talk about during our conversation:
- Kamran's website, Roadmap.sh: https://roadmap.sh/
- Kamran's "Design Patterns for Humans" GitHub book: https://github.com/kamranahmedse/design-patterns-for-humans
- freeCodeCamp's "How to Contribute to Open Source guide" Quincy mentions: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-contribute-to-open-source-projects-beginners-guide/
- Kamran on Twitter: https://x.com/kamrify
On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Dennis Ivy, a software engineer and prolific freelancer. He dropped out of college at 18 and taught himself how to build websites. He started his first agency, built and sold products, and eventually started teaching his skills on YouTube.
We talk about:
- Growing up in an immigrant family of 13 kids - Dropping out of school and working construction before learning to code - Figuring out how to get web development clients through trial and error - Selling his codebase to his employer $61,000 and using it to fund his journey into teaching Python
Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro?
Also, I want to thank the 10,443 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
Links we talk about during our conversation:
- The Bussard Ramjet theoretical spacecraft Quincy mentions as an analogy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bussard_ramjet
- Dennis Ivy's React + Appwrite course on freeCodeCamp: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/build-a-sticky-notes-app-with-react-and-appwrite/
- Dennis Ivy's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/dennisivy
- Dennis Ivy on Twitter: https://twitter.com/dennisivy11
On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews YK Sugi. He's a software engineer and prolific YouTube Computer Science tutorial creator. He's worked at Google and Microsoft. He runs the CS Dojo channel where he shares his insights on software development, AI, and developer career progressions. We talk about: - Emerging AI tools and how developers are adopting them - The role of interest rates in developer hiring - Japan's developer work culture VS the US - How not to burn out Can you guess what song I'm playing in the intro? Also, I want to thank the 10,993 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate Or you can listen to the podcast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Be sure to follow the freeCodeCamp Podcast there so you'll get new episodes each Friday. Links we talk about during our conversation: - YK's freeCodeCamp article on the resume he used to get a job at Google: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/heres-the-resume-i-used-to-get-a-job-at-google-as-a-software-engineer-26516526f29a/ - YK's freeCodeCamp article about leaving his job at Google to focus on entrepreneurship: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/why-i-left-my-100-000-job-at-google-60b5cf4ebefe/ - YK's popular CS Dojo YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/CSDojo - YK on Twitter: https://x.com/ykdojo
On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Meg Risdal. She's a data scientist and Product Manager at Kaggle, Google's Data Science competition platform.
Megan works closely with the global data science community, and on Google's Gemma open models project.
We talk about:
- Google's Kaggle, which hosts 300k open data sets and runs data science competitions each week that anyone can participate in.
- How people talk in academia VS how people talk in tech
- Stack Overflow VS Kaggle – how Megan contrasts what it was like to work on these two "communities of practice"
- Linguistics and its importance in LLMs and AI research
Can you recognize the song I'm playing during the intro? It's a punk song from 1994.
Be sure to follow The freeCodeCamp podcast in your favorite podcast app. And share this podcast with a friend. Let's inspire more folks to learn to code and build careers for themselves in tech.
Also, I want to thank the 10,779 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
Links we talk about during our conversation:
Meg's blog: https://www.meg.dev/
The Sliced Data Science Gameshow that Meg co-hosted with Nick Wan: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6PX3YIZuHhyQmXKnyZmVDzdgAYbzwgDw
Meg on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MeganRisdal
Kaggle's open learning resources: https://www.kaggle.com/learn
The Gemma team at Google that Meg also works on: https://ai.google.dev/gemma
On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Eddie Jaoude who is a software engineer and open source creator.
He's worked more than 15 years as a developer everywhere from Germany banking sector to London's tech startup scene. He's now a dev rel for hire and runs several open source projects.
We talk about: - Eddie's journey into open source - How he built his reputation through hackathons - How he leveraged his network to find his first freelance clients - His audio-video setup for filming tutorials
Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's the theme from a 1982 police show.
Also, I want to thank the 10,773 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
Links we talk about during our conversation:
Eddie's YouTube channel with more than 700 tutorials: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5mnBodB73bR88fLXHSfzYA
Eddie on Twitter: https://twitter.com/eddiejaoude
Eddie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eddiejaoude/
On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Jack Herrington. As a kid he had to work to overcome Dyslexia and didn't have good enough grades to get into college. Despite this, he's worked as a software engineer for more than 40 years at companies like Nike, Adobe, and Walmart. He also runs the popular Blue Collar Coder YouTube channel.
We talk about:
- How Jack struggled with Dyslexia, had terrible grades that couldn't get him into college, but got really into GameDev in the early 1980s
- Early developer job opportunities that took his family from his home town in Pennsylvania to Melbourne Australia
- How he started blogging as he learned, and ultimately published 6 programming books
Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's from a 1979 new-wave song.
Also, I want to thank the 10,443 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
Links we talk about during our conversation:
Blue Collar Coder YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@jherr
Jack on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jherr
1984 ad from Apple: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I
Edward Tufte, the academic Jack mentions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Tufte
Ben Affleck's funny drunk DVD commentary on Armageddon movie (this contains profanity so don't listen to with young kids around): https://www.tiktok.com/@alltherightmovies/video/7238180210527505690?lang=en
On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Emma Bostian. She's a software engineer turned manager at Spotify and Prolific coding teacher.
We talk about:
- How at her first developer job at IBM, Emma's boss told her: "You need to get your stuff together or you won't make it in this industry." And the transformation that followed.
- Emma's thoughts on Computer Science degrees. "Going to college gives you credibility and a network. You can get opportunities that way."
- How Emma hires software engineers. (Hint: she tries to disregard degrees completely.)
- How Emma intentionally procrastinates some big tasks to give her mind time to figure out the puzzle pieces
Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's from a 1979 punk song.
Also, I want to thank the 10,776 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
Links we talk about during our conversation:
- Emma on Twitter: https://x.com/emmabostian
- The Ladybug Podcast about women in tech that Emma helped host for several years: https://www.ladybug.dev/
On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Hiroko Nishimura. She's a special ed teacher turned system administrator turned technical instructor.
Hiroko grew up in Japan and moved to the US as a kid. In her early 20s, she was diagnosed with a vascular tumor in her brain. After life-saving surgery, she had to work to regain the ability to walk and talk. She still lives with disabilities to this day.
Despite this, she's gone on to author technical books, become an AWS hero, and create the popular AWS Newbies community. More than 500,000 people have taken her LinkedIn Learning course.
We talk about:
- How Hiroko moved to the US as a kid and learned English and American culture
- Hiroko's vascular tumor diagnosis, and how she recovered from brain surgery and brain damage
- Her big move to NYC and her years working as a system administrator and ultimately cloud engineer there
- How she made the jump to teaching system administration full-time as a course creator
Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's from a 1990 song by a Scottish rock band.
Also, I want to thank the 10,443 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
Links we talk about during our conversation:
- Hiroko’s article about her brain surgery: https://hiroko.io/my-words/
- Hiroko's book AWS for non-engineers: https://www.manning.com/books/aws-for-non-engineers
- Hiroko's AWS course: https://introtoaws.com
- And her AWS linktree: https://aws.hiroko.io
- My history of the 100DaysOfCode challenge: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/the-crazy-history-of-the-100daysofcode-challenge-and-why-you-should-try-it-for-2018-6c89a76e298d/
On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Rahul Pandey. He's a software engineer who left his $800K / year FAANG job to build his own startup.
We talk about:
- The post-layoff developer job landscape - Developer interviews and how to differentiate yourself - Why salary negotiation still makes sense - His belief that 10x engineers exist – and even 100x and 1000x engineers
Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's from a 1969 mowtown classic.
Also, I want to thank the 10,443 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
Links we talk about during our conversation:
- Rahul's Android app tutorial on freeCodeCamp (4 hour watch): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-how-to-build-and-publish-an-android-app-from-scratch/
- Rahul's video about post-college job offers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rceUVaiXQgU
- Taro, Rahul's company: https://www.jointaro.com/
- The story of a software engineer who moves back to India to run his father's chemical business after his death: https://anandsanwal.me/2018/06/19/dad-company-sale/
- Conference talk about the correlation between interest rates and developer hiring, by Pragmatic Engineer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpPPHDxR9aM
- Rahul on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rpandey1234/
On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Angie Jones. She's a developer and holder of 27 software patents. She's worked at companies like IBM and Twitter, doing both test engineering and developer advocacy.
We talk about:
- How a bad performance review from her boss early in her career taught her to be less timid and more vocal about her ideas.
- How she invented lots of software testing processes and holds 27 software patents.
- Her work at IBM, Twitter, and other big tech companies.
- How feature development and test development are completely different disciplines, which each require dedicated practice and their own mindsets
- Her interest in the game Second Life and the possibility of virtual worlds
- How she uses AI for debugging and test engineering
Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's a 1992 Acid Jazz song.
Also, I want to thank the 9,779 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
Links we talk about during our conversation:
- Test Automation University learning paths: https://testautomationu.applitools.com/learningpaths.html
- Angie on Twitter: https://twitter.com/techgirl1908
On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Ken Jee. Ken's a Data Scientist. He's also a Sports Analytics practitioner who works with US Team Golf and USA Basketball.
Ken hosts the excellent Ken's Nearest Neighbors podcast and the Exponential Athelete podcast.
We talk about:
- How an injury pushed Ken out of pro sports and into data science
- How Ken explains his statistical insights to coaches and players to help them improve their performance
- Why Ken doesn't think building projects is all that useful anymore. "Data Scientists should instead build products."
- How Ken starts and ends each day with meditation, and writes down all the ideas that pop into his head after each session.
- Ken's observation that: "Who is the best suited to excel in a world where AI tools are prominent? Probably the people who are building them. People in the data science domain, people who are coding – they're the most prepared to use these tools for other things."
Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's from a 2006 dance song, and it was originally played on a synth.
Also, I want to thank the 10,109 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
Links we talk about during our conversation:
Ken's Nearest Neighbors Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpEJMMRoTIHJ8vG8q_EwqCg
The Exponential Athelete Podcast, also hosted by Ken: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAkSd12rP282takuFJKsAsYlHdpdEDhuE
The Founders podcast, which both Ken and Quincy listen to. James Dyson episode: https://www.founderspodcast.com/episodes/88384801/senra-james-dyson-against-the-odds-an-autobiography
Anna Wintour episode: https://www.founderspodcast.com/episodes/58741411/senra-326-anna-wintour
San Antonio caves that Quincy visited: https://naturalbridgecaverns.com/
On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews John Washam, a software engineer at Amazon. John's also creator of one of the most popular open source projects of all time, Coding Interview University.
This is John's first-ever podcast interview, and the first time he's told his story. Interviewing him was an absolute honor.
We talk about:
- How John delivered pizzas to save enough money to buy his first computer in the 90s. "I was tired of being a broke kid."
- John's first career in the US military, where he worked as a translator in South Korea
- How John crammed Computer Science for 8 months and taught himself enough theory and coding skills to get a job in big tech, then published Coding Interview University on GitHub
- What it's like to work as a senior developer at a big tech company, and what you can expect the journey to be like
Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's from a 1986 rock song.
Also, I want to thank the 9,779 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
Links we talk about during our conversation:
- Coding Interview University: https://github.com/jwasham/coding-interview-university
- The Starup Next Door, John's blog: https://startupnextdoor.com/
- Follow John on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnawasham/
- The Talent Code, the book John recommends: https://www.amazon.com/Talent-Code-Greatness-Born-Grown/dp/055380684X
On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Daniel Bourke. He's a Machine Learning Engineer and creator of many popular tutorials on YouTube. He's also a frequent freeCodeCamp contributor.
We talk about:
- How as a kid he hacked into his school's network and gave himself good grades, just like the kid from Wargames. (Don't try this at home.)
- What he learned from helping fix 5,000 people's computers
- How Machine Learning actually works. What the AI models are actually doing for you in the background.
- His advice for anyone getting into Machine Learning in 2024, in terms of what to prioritize learning
Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's from a 2020 song by an Australian musician.
Also, I want to thank the 9,779 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
Links we talk about during our conversation:
Daniel's 26-hour PyTorch course on freeCodeCamp: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-pytorch-for-deep-learning-in-day/
Nutrify, Daniel's "pokedex for food". Uses computer vision to map photos of food to nutrition data: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jpLqtAWKfo
Daniel's Charles Bukowski-inspired novel "Charlie Walks": https://www.charliewalks.com/
The research website Daniel mentions: https://arxiv.org/
Daniel on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mrdbourke
On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Jessica Chan AKA Coder Coder. She's a software engineer has worked in the field for more than a decade. Interestingly, she studied photography in school and never took a programming class.
We talk about:
- How she and her sister ran a dial-in Bulletin Board System (BBS) back in the pre-web days
- How her first year as a dev she "was just living in abject fear of losing my job."
- How she stayed at her first developer agency job for 7 years, and went from imposter syndrome afflicted newbie to getting promoted
- Her philosophy on creating programming tutorials: "You don't have to be on the cutting edge. I don't operate on the cutting edge."
Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's from a 1993 rock song.
Also, I want to thank the 9,779 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
Links we talk about during our conversation:
Jessica's 7-hour "How to Build a Website" freeCodeCamp course: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/create-a-simple-website-with-html-css-javascript/
Jessica's coding journey animated video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jA14r2ujQ7s
Kevin Powell, the "King of CSS", who has also shared courses on freeCodeCamp: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/author/kevin-powell/
Jessica on Twitter: https://twitter.com/thecodercoder
On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Scott Hanselman. Scott's a developer at Microsoft, a prolific teacher, and has hosted the Hanselminutes podcast for nearly two decades.
We talk about:
- How he leads a fully-remote team from his home of Portland, Oregon
- His 11-year journey to getting his degree
- What he learned from teaching programming at community college
- What he's learned about software development from recording 980 podcast interviews across 20 years
Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's from a 1994 punk song.
Also, I want to thank the 9,779 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
Links we talk about during our conversation:
- Scott's Hanselminutes Podcast: https://www.hanselman.com/podcasts
- A personal tour of Lotus Notes founder Ray Ozzie's computer artifacts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4awQH6WhP4
- Scott on Twitter: https://twitter.com/shanselman
On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Alison Yoon. She's a Software Engineer who started off in fashion design and taught herself to code using freeCodeCamp.
We talk about:
- What it's like to work in fashion. "You're surrounded by exhausted, unhappy people."
- How she used freeCodeCamp and the 100DaysOfCode challenge to learn to code and start her software development career
- How she learned English and how to work on engineering teams in the UK.
- How she's leading the Korean translation effort for the freeCodeCamp community, with 10,000s of people now reading Korean articles each month
Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's from a 1985 song.
Also, I want to thank the 9,779 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
Links we talk about during our conversation:
- freeCodeCamp's Korean edition, including Quincy's "Learn to code and get a developer job" book translated into Korean: https://www.freecodecamp.org/korean/news/learn-to-code-book/
- Alison on Twitter: https://twitter.com/aliyooncreative
- Devil Wears Prada trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZOZwUQKu3E
On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Adrian Twarog. He's a Software Engineer who started his career by working as the office IT guy at a school and other offices for 10 years. He's since published YouTube courses that millions of people have watched.
We talk about: - How Adrian built his development skills by volunteering to taking on web design projects at work - How he started making design tutorials on YouTube and published 300 in a single year - How he was early to the AI engineering craze and published GPT tutorials with millions of views – Adrian's many freeCodeCamp courses, and his gorgeous book on design fundamentals - Being a dev in Perth, Australia – on the other side of the Earth from Silicon Valley – yet still staying at the forefront of the state of the art
Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's from a 1995 industrial rock anthem.
Also, I want to thank the 9,771 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
Links we talk about during our conversation:
- Adrian's popular video "Real life RPG to track your life": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMn9sxCWN0M
- Adrian's UX course on freeCodeCamp: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/ui-ux-design-tutorial-from-zero-to-hero-with-wireframe-prototype-figma/
- Merge, Adrian's Discord community for devs: https://www.mergewebdev.com/
- Adrian's design book, Enhance UI: https://enhanceui.com/
On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Colby Fayock. He's a Software Engineer and prolific teacher who has created 68 tutorials for freeCodeCamp, and more than 100 videos on his YouTube – all freely available.
We talk about: - Colby's early days doing design work for local bands - How Colby went to art school, then pivoted that into a software development - His early career at ThinkGeek where he not only did web dev but also worked as a male model for their products. - Colby's day-to-day work as a developer experience engineer, building demo applications and SDKs - How Colby uses AI tools in his day-to-day work, and what he thinks its current limits are.
Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's from a 1995 punk song.
Also, I want to thank the 9,771 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
Links we talk about during our conversation:
On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Dr. Chuck. He's a software engineer and Computer Science professor at University of Michigan, which has one of the top-ranked CS programs in the world.
Dr. Charles "Chuck" Severance is also creator of many popular free learning resources like his Python for Everyone and C for Everyone, which millions of students have taken over the past decade.
We talk about: - What seperates a Master Programmer from an average developer, and how to become one - Dr. Chuck's mission to make programming knowledge freely available - The fundamental shortcomings of how Computer Science is currently taught at universities – even elite universities like the one he's a professor at - Dr. Chuck's theories on recent tech layoffs and what he thinks the near future holds - Dr. Chuck's love of racing $2,500 "lemon" cars that he revives from the junk yard, and flying planes
Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's from a 1973 song.
Be sure to follow The freeCodeCamp podcast in your favorite podcast app. And share this podcast with a friend. Let's inspire more folks to learn to code and build careers for themselves in tech.
Also, I want to thank the 9,331 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
Links we talk about during our conversation:
- Dr. Chuck's latest freeCodeCamp course on C programming: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/complete-c-programming-course-from-dr-chuck/
- Dr. Chuck's Python for Everyone freeCodeCamp Course: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/python-for-everybody/
- Kylie Ying's popular Machine Learning for Everyone course inspired by Dr. Chuck: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/machine-learning-for-everybody/
- Dr. Chuck's website with his free interactive coursework: https://online.dr-chuck.com/
On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Suz Hinton. She's a software engineer, security researcher, and one of the first ever people to live-stream her coding on Twitch.
We talk about: - How Suz started her career building browser ads in Adobe Flash, working around bandwidth early 2000s limitations. - How she moved to the US from Melbourne to work at Zappos, and then Microsoft and Stripe. - Her love of hardware and embedded development - How she went back to school to study infosec, and launched a second career as a security researcher - How she nearly burned out after 20 years in tech, and what she's doing to recover.
Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's a 2015 song from an Australian musician.
Be sure to follow The freeCodeCamp podcast in your favorite podcast app. And share this podcast with a friend. Let's inspire more folks to learn to code and build careers for themselves in tech.
Also, I want to thank the 9,331 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
Links we talk about during our conversation:
- Suz's article on live coding on freeCodeCamp: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/lessons-from-my-first-year-of-live-coding-on-twitch-41a32e2f41c1/
- NoClip video game development documentaries: https://www.youtube.com/@NoclipDocs
- The Dream Machine by M. Mitchell Waldrop. Suz says it's "Dense and long, but the best narrative about how computing came to be." https://press.stripe.com/the-dream-machine
- Space Rogue: How the Hackers Known as L0pht Changed the World by Cris Thomas. "A book about the original cult of the dead cow hacking group." https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/space-rogue-cris-thomas/1142912008
On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Jerod Santo, host of The Changelog, a podcast about open source software development that has been going strong for 15 years.
Jerod is plugged in to the world of Open Source, going to all the big conferences and interviewing all the big open source creators.
We have a fun, wide-reaching conversation about some of the current issues facing open source, such as AI models and Relicensing – essentially, a big company closed-sourcing a previously open source project after they buy out its creator. (Fun fact: this can't happen to freeCodeCamp because charities cannot be bought or sold.)
I ask Jerod about:
- his life as a remote dev in Omaha, Nebraska, raising his 6 his kids - the Changelog News podcast with its weekly 10 minutes of updates on the world of open source - his process, and how he researches and surfaces interesting news for his show - and how The Changelog commissioned 3 full albums worth of music over the years, which you can stream for free.
Can you guess what bass line I'm playing during the intro? It's from a 1984 pop classic.
Be sure to follow The freeCodeCamp podcast in your favorite podcast app. And share this podcast with a friend. Let's inspire more folks to learn to code and build careers for themselves in tech.
Also, I want to thank the 9,331 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
Links we talk about during our conversation:
Jerod's weekly Changelog News podcast that you should totally subscribe to (it's free): https://changelog.com/news
Jerod and Adam interview the head of the Open Source Initiative on AI models and open source, which he and I discussed during this podcast: https://changelog.com/podcast/578
Changelog Beats: https://changelog.com/beats
And of course, my interview with Jerod and Adam about their developer journeys, and the history of The Changelog on its 10th anniversary: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/open-source-moves-fast-10-years-of-the-changelog/
On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews ThePrimeagean. He's a software engineer who streams himself programming. He recently left his job at Netflix to stream full-time.
We talk about: - Prime's journey from his teacher telling him he'll never accomplish anything in life to working as an engineer at one of the most prestigious tech companies. - Prime's love of "Nintendo Hard" video games, and how his love of challenge propelled him to "get good" at coding - What it's like to live stream coding in front of more than 1,000 people for a dozen hours each week - Leaving San Francisco to move his family of 6 to a horse ranch in South Dakota - Prime's thoughts on AI and how he thinks it will actually create more developer jobs than it destroys
I had a blast talking with this guy. Though I don't agree with everything he says, I am right there with him on AI and how it's useful but over-hyped. We'll see what future versions hold and whether a "Moore's Law of AI" is really at work here, or whether it will plateau.
I also agree with Prime that devs need to slow down and improve their foundational skills. There are no shortcuts to anywhere worth going.
Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's from a 1996 rock song.
Be sure to follow The freeCodeCamp podcast in your favorite podcast app. And share this podcast with a friend. Let's inspire more folks to learn to code and build careers for themselves in tech.
Also, I want to thank the 9,331 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
Links we talk about during the interview:
- Prime's Twitch, from which his YouTube videos are derived: https://www.twitch.tv/theprimeagen
- Prime's Harpoon library on GitHub, which he talks about maintaining: https://github.com/ThePrimeagen/harpoon
- A speedrun of Battletoads by The Mexican Runner, to show you how "Nintendo Hard" this game really is. 36 minutes is an excellent time for a non-pro speedrunner like Prime to achieve: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTPGpA0ha9Y
On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Gary Simon, a developer and designer who started DesignCourse.com and has published several courses on freeCodeCamp.org over the years.
We talk about: - Growing up in rural Ohio, marrying young, and staying out there despite his success as a developer and entrepreneur. - Early client work, and how he designed thousands of logos for clients before becoming an all-out web developer. - Using his skills to help his wife start her own lactation consultant business online - Gary's guitar shredding chops.
I recorded this podcast live and I haven't edited it at all. I want to capture the feel of a real live conversation, with all the human quirks that entails.
Can you guess what song I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's from a 1995s Nintendo game.
Be sure to follow The freeCodeCamp podcast in your favorite podcast app. And share this podcast with a friend. Let's inspire more folks to learn to code and build careers for themselves in tech.
Also, I want to thank the 9,331 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
Links we talk about during the interview:
- Gary's Learn UI Fundamentals course on freeCodeCamp: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-ui-design-fundamentals-with-this-free-one-hour-course/
- Gary's freeCodeCamp live stream series: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/design-course/
- Gary's tool for memorizing the Guitar fretboard and it's 49 notes: https://fretastic.com/
- Gary's Retrowave Guitar music video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDc2OvReYh0
On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews prolific programming teacher John Smilga. John grew up in the Soviet Union. He worked construction for 5 years before becoming a developer. Today he has taught millions of fellow devs through his many courses on freeCodeCamp.
John spent his childhood in Latvia before the Soviet Union fell. He sought work in the UK as an expat hospitality worker on the tiny island of Guernsey.
But he had his sights set on moving to the US. There he worked construction and taught himself to code. He also attended online university courses to get a degree.
He met his wife, a nurse from Ukraine. Together they started a family and live together in Florida.
During this conversation, John talks about his journey into teaching the programming and computer science concepts he's learned. He talks about his free courses on freeCodeCamp and his paid courses that help him pay the bills.
John's voice is instantly recognizable by developers. He shares that this is because he has condition where is vocal cords are partially paralyzed, for which he has to receive frequent injections.
I hope you enjoy our conversation.
Can you guess what bass line I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's from a 1982 song produced by Quincy Jones.
Be sure to follow The freeCodeCamp podcast in your favorite podcast app. And share this podcast with a friend. Let's inspire more folks to learn to code and build careers for themselves in tech.
Also, I want to thank the 9,003 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
Links we talk about during the interview:
Guernsey island: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guernsey
John's personal website: https://johnsmilga.com/
John Smilga on Twitter: https://twitter.com/john_smilga
On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Ben Awad, a game developer who creates developer tutorials on YouTube and TikTok.
I hope you enjoy our conversation. Can you guess what bass line I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's from a 1979 song.
Be sure to follow The freeCodeCamp podcast in your favorite podcast app. And share this podcast with a friend. Let's inspire more folks to learn to code and build careers for themselves in tech.
Also, I want to thank the 8,983 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
Links we talk about during the interview:
Ben's game, Void Pet on Android and iOS (Built in React Native): https://voidpet.com/
XKCD coming on "Real Programmers" that Quincy mentions: https://xkcd.com/378/
React Native course by Ben Awad: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/create-an-app-that-works-on-ios-android-and-the-web-with-react-native-web/
I can't find my Mac Control hotkeys video tutorial that I mentioned anywhere, so I wrote a quick article explaining how to use these: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/mac-control-keyboard-shortcuts-hotkeys-that-work-everywhere-in-macos/
On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Andrew Brown, a CTO-turned co-founder of ExamPro.co.
Andrew created this cloud certification exam prep website with another Andrew – also from Canada, who also loves Star Trek.
We talk about Andrew's early career fixing computers in the 90s, and his early freelance web development work. These ultimately lead to jobs and promotions that leveled him up to CTO.
Andrew also shares his advice to devs who want to learn DevOps and Cloud Engineering, and which certs to prioritize.
Andrew suffers from Muscle Tension Dysphonia, a disease that causes voice loss. He shares how he's using AI tools to get around this.
Andrew also talks about his love of Tetris Attack (also known as Panel de Pon or Pokémon Puzzle League). He built a frame-perfect port for competitive online play.
And of course, Andrew's favorite Star Trek episodes of all time.
Can you guess what bass line I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's the theme from a 90s cartoon.
Be sure to follow The freeCodeCamp podcast in your favorite podcast app. And share this podcast with a friend. Let's inspire more folks to learn to code and build careers for themselves in tech.
Also, I want to thank the 8,933 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
Links we talk about during the interview:
Just a few of Andrew's many freeCodeCamp cloud cert prep courses. (He has dozens more on freeCodeCamp's YouTube channel): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/author/andrew/
His website, ExamPro.co: https://www.exampro.co/
American Mall simulator browser game by Bloomberg: https://www.bloomberg.com/features/american-mall-game/
The Greatest Generation podcast: https://maximumfun.org/podcasts/greatest-generation/
On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Kass Moreno, a Senior Front End Developer and CSS Artist.
Kass started learning coding at age 28 and has since built a reputation as one of the most skilled artists who work with CSS.
We talk about:
Can you guess what bass line I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's a 1982 pop classic.
Be sure to follow The freeCodeCamp podcast in your favorite podcast app. And share this podcast with a friend. Let's inspire more folks to learn to code and build careers for themselves in tech.
Also, I want to thank the 8,904 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
Links we talk about during the interview:
Bruno Simon's 3D interactive portfolio using Threejs. Drive an RC car around knock things down.
1-Dimensional PacMan game that I mentions. (Be careful – it's addictive)
On this week's episode of the podcast, I interview Jabril. He's an indie game developer who's building a turn-based fighting game called ultrabouters.
Jabril has developed tons of other games as well. He runs the popular Jabrils gamedev focused-YouTube. He's also published a 5-hour introduction to programming course on freeCodeCamp.
We talk about:
- How Jabril got into gamedev as a kid when he got a copy of GameMaker - Jabril's career working at a comedy club and a radio station - The anime that Jabril's been working on for years - Jabril's advice to gamedevs who want to make a career out of building video games
Can you guess what bass line I'm playing on my bass during the intro? It's a 2009 song that became popular in the 2010's by being associated with a meme.
Be sure to share this podcast with a friend. Let's inspire more folks to learn to code and build careers for themselves in tech.
Also, I want to thank the 8,909 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
Links we talk about during the interview:
Jabril's full length Programming for Beginners course on freeCodeCamp: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/programming-for-beginners-how-to-code-with-python-and-c-sharp/
That time Quincy angered the entire BTS army with a confused tweet: https://twitter.com/ossia/status/993171422863417344
"The best episodes of Shark Tank are the bad ideas." How Jabril created a Fake Shark Tank Episode Generator using AI tools: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcGjYivktyc
Subscribe to Jabril on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Jabrils
On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp Founder Quincy Larson interviews Leon Noel, founder of 100Devs and head of engineering at Resilient Coders. Growing up, Leon had it drilled into him that he had to become a doctor, lawyer, or dentist. But his ambitions grew and he went on to have an exciting career in tech. After a successful exit from a startup, Leon wanted to help folks who were struggling during the pandemic. He started 100Devs, a charity which has helped 10,000s of people learn to code. We talk about:
Quincy recorded this podcast live and hasn't edited it at all. We want to capture the feel of a real live conversation, with all the human quirks that entails. Can you guess what song he's playing on my bass during the intro? It's his arrangement of the intro to a 1990s cartoon. Be sure to follow The freeCodeCamp podcast in your favorite podcast app. And share this podcast with a friend. Let's inspire more folks to learn to code and build careers for themselves in tech. Also, we want to thank the 8,427 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate Links we talk about during the interview:
The video that changed Leon's life on Spaced Repetition, by Ali Abdaal: https://youtu.be/Z-zNHHpXoMM
The official Anki app, which is free on web / desktop and doesn’t lock you into a subscription. Leon's advice: "Only create cards on one device, but review on any to save you from weird syncing issues." https://apps.ankiweb.net
Dr. Barbara Oakley’s Learn How to Learn course, which Leon calls "a masterpiece": https://coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn
The 100Devs website (new cohort starting in early May): https://100devs.org/about
Trailer for X-men '97: https://youtu.be/pv3Ss8o9gGQ
Thelonious Monk [pianist Quincy mentions] "Straight No Chaser" documentary trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx0E9-ThvKc
Leon on YouTube: http://leonnoel.com/youtube
Leon on Discord: http://leonnoel.com/discord
Leon's Twitch for his live streams: http://leonnoel.com/twitch
Leon's website: https://leonnoel.com/
In this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Jessica Lord, AKA JLord. She's worked as a software engineer for more than a decade at companies like GitHub and Glitch.
Among her many accomplishments, Jessica created the Electon team at GitHub. Electron is a library for building desktop apps using browser technologies. If you've used the desktop version of Slack, Figma, or VS Code, you've used Electron.
I recorded this podcast live and I haven't edited it at all. I want to capture the feel of a real live conversation, with all the human quirks that entails. As with all my podcast episodes, I start by performing a classic bass line. Can you guess what song this bass line is from? It's a "cult" hit from 1990.
Be sure to follow The freeCodeCamp podcast in your favorite podcast app. And share this podcast with a friend. Let's inspire more folks to learn to code and build careers for themselves in tech.
Also, I want to thank the 8,427 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
Links we talk about during the interview:
GitIt, Jessica's interactive Git course on Node School: https://github.com/jlord/git-it
Jessica's old craft blog (you may get an HTTPS warning from your browser but the site is just an old Blogspot site): http://www.ecabonline.com/
JSBin founder Remy Sharp's blog about JSBin and how he "lost his love of his side project": https://remysharp.com/2015/09/14/jsbin-toxic-part-1
Subdivisions song by Rush that Quincy mentions. Great early morning listening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYYdQB0mkEU
This week freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Phoebe Voong-Fadel about her childhood as the daughter of refugees, and how she self-studied coding and became a professional developer at the age of 36.
Phoebe worked from age 12 at her parent's Chinese take-out restaurant. She was able to study history at the London School of Economics, before working in higher ed.
She left her job to raise two kids due to the high cost of childcare in the UK, and spent years self-studying coding before becoming a software developer at age 36.
I recorded this podcast live and I haven't edited it at all. I want to capture the feel of a real live conversation, with all the human quirks that entails. As with all my podcast episodes, I start by performing a classic bass line. Can you guess what song this bass line is from? It's from 1989.
Phoebe has earned multiple certifications from freeCodeCamp, and also published a number of articles on our publication.
How Phoebe went from stay-at-home mom to Front End Web Developer at age 36: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-i-went-from-stay-at-home-mum-to-front-end-web-developer-39724046692a/
Phoebe's review of Harvard CS50: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/cs50-course-review/
The BBC Take-away Kids documentary, which Phoebe said is what her childhood was like, working from age 12: https://www.bbc.com/news/av/stories-47007812
Phoebe's website, with her portfolio and links to her socials: https://www.thecodinghamster.com/
You can watch a video version of my interview with Phoebe here: https://youtu.be/WomQr-jRO1c
If you've read this far, consider supporting our 501(c)(3) public charity, and aiding us in our mission to create more free learning resources for everyone: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
She's worked in tech for over a decade as a developer at several tech companies, including Microsoft, Amazon and Netlify. She has gradually progressed to senior developer and now CTO.
Links we talk about during the interview:
Cassidy's newsletter: https://cassidoo.co/newsletter/
Cassidy on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@cassidoo
Cassidy on Twitter: https://twitter.com/cassidoo
The National Center for Women and Information Technology: https://ncwit.org/
In this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson discusses AI and the future of education with Seth Goldin. Among other things, Seth is co-founder of College Compendium, an education charity, and studies computer science at Yale.
Also, the quote Quincy mentioned isn't by Ben Franklin. It's by William Blackstone in 1769 who said: "the law holds that it is better that 10 guilty persons escape, than that 1 innocent suffer (innocent person be convicted)."
Seth's free "Google Like a Pro" course: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-google-like-a-pro/
Seth's free "The Ethics of AI and ML" course: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/the-ethics-of-ai-and-ml/
Follow Seth on Twitter: https://twitter.com/seth_goldin
Seth's recommended article "ChatGPT is a Blurry JPEG of the Web": https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/chatgpt-is-a-blurry-jpeg-of-the-web
Klara and the Sun book Seth recommended: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klara_and_the_Sun
Be sure to follow The freeCodeCamp podcast in your favorite podcast app. And share this podcast with a friend. Let's inspire more folks to learn to code and build careers for themselves in tech.
On this week's episode of the podcast, I interview Logan Kilpatric, a software engineer and ChatGPT creator Open AI's first-ever Developer Advocate hire. The week Logan started, ChatGPT hit 1 million users. (It now has 180 million monthly users.)
During our conversation, Logan shares his journey from Illinois to Harvard, NASA, and now the world's most-watched tech company, Open AI. Along the way, he joined the board of NumFOCUS, which oversees Data Science Python libraries like NumPy, Pandas, and Matplotlib.
This is my long, intimate conversation with an emerging star in the AI and Machine Learning world. Logan is also a prolific freeCodeCamp.org contributor. It was a blast talking with Logan for nearly two hours. I think you'll dig it.
You can follow Logan on Twitter: https://twitter.com/OfficialLoganK
On this week's episode of the podcast, I interview orchestral musician-turned software engineer Jessica Wilkins.
Jessica found success in the extremely competitive field of classical music, playing the Oboe in orchestras, recording sessions, and even at major events such as the NFL awards on national television.
She started her own business – a sheet music e-commerce website. This not only helped her survive in the high cost of living city of Los Angeles – it also helped her learn web development.
During the pandemic, many of her performance and recording gigs were cancelled. This inspired her to dive much deeper into coding. She now works as a software engineer at freeCodeCamp, and has contributed substantially to freeCodeCamp's core curriculum. Also, her many freeCodeCamp tutorial articles have more than 400,000 readers each month.
During our conversation, Jessica talks about the insane pressure she faced as a musician, where standards are incredibly high. So many people want to be professional musicians, and there is so little money in the industry. Jessica was a rare case of finding success. But even that success could not dissuade her from diving into software development.
This is a long, intimate conversation with one of the sharpest minds behind freeCodeCamp.org. It was a blast talking with Jessica for more than two hours. I think you'll dig it.
Some timestamps in case you want to skip some our lengthy discussion about music education and the music industry:
- 0:00:00 My bass intro. See if you can guess this 1970 classic bassline. - 0:01:00 Our discussion of Jessica's upbringing by a school teacher and single mom, and her journey into classical music - 1:07:00 Jessica Learns to code and builds a profitable sheet music e-commerce business - 1:35:00 Jessica's decision to go all in on software development - 1:44:00 Contract work and thoughts on what caused recent tech layoffs
Links we talk about during the interview:
One of Jessica's articles - 40 JavaScript Projects for Beginners – Easy Ideas to Get Started Coding JS: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/javascript-projects-for-beginners/
The Black Excellence Music Project, Jessica's first React project: https://blackexcellencemusicproject.com/
Danny Thompson freeCodeCamp Podcast interview: https://freecodecamp.libsyn.com/site/were-back-danny-thompsons-journey-from-chicken-fryer-to-software-engineer
Danny's LinkedIn course that Quincy mentions: https://www.linkedin.com/learning/linkedin-profiles-for-technical-professionals/main-visuals-on-your-profile
In this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Per Borgen about AI engineering and interactive developer education. Per is the co-founder and CEO of Scrimba and is a software engineer.
Be sure to follow The freeCodeCamp podcast in your favorite podcast app. And share this podcast with a friend. Let's inspire more folks to learn to code and build careers for themselves in tech.
Links we talk about during the interview:
Per's HTML + CSS course: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-html-and-css-from-the-ceo-of-scrimba/
Per's JavaScript course: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/full-javascript-course-for-beginners/
In this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Robby Russell. Robby created the open-source project Oh My ZSH.
Be sure to follow The freeCodeCamp podcast in your favorite podcast app. And share this podcast with a friend. Let's inspire more folks to learn to code and build careers for themselves in tech.
Beau's YouTube course style guide: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-create-a-great-technical-course/
How I got a second degree and earned 5 developer certifications in just one year, while working and raising two kids https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-i-got-a-second-degree-and-earned-5-developer-certifications-in-just-one-year-while-working-and-2b902ee291ab/
Beau's personal website: http://carnes.cc/
I'm Quincy Larson, teacher and founder of freeCodeCamp.org. And each week, I'm bringing you insight from developers, entrepreneurs, and ambitious people who are getting into tech.
Today I'm joined by Kylie Ying. She's a software engineer and a teacher at freeCodeCamp.
We talk about Kylie's 5 years at MIT, her time at CERN working on the Large Hadron Collider, competitive figure skating, and even poker-playing AIs.
I hope these weekly freeCodeCamp podcasts are firing you up about learning more about technology.
Tell your friends about the freeCodeCamp podcast. Let's inspire more folks to learn to code and build careers for themselves in tech.
Links to things we discuss:
- Kylie review of her 5 years at MIT (20 minute watch): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtujJjKmfN0
- Kylie's video about CERN's Large Hadron Collider (17 minute watch): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmJ44z9hl8c
- Kylie's Machine Learning for Everbody course (2 hour course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/machine-learning-for-everybody/
- Kylie's Hot Dog or Not Dog Neural Networks course (2 hour course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/convolutional-neural-networks-course-for-beginners/
- Real Genius movie trailer – classic 80s movie about graduate school (2 minute watch): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuv7SIVNkx8
Dhawal Shah is creator of Class Central, a popular search engine for online courses.
Dhawal talk about the history of online courses and the Massive Open Online Course revolution of the early 2010s. We also talk about his childhood growing up in India, and how his life changed one day when he won a computer from a Cartoon Network sweepstakes.
Tell your friends about the freeCodeCamp podcast. Let's inspire more folks to learn to code and build careers for themselves in tech.
Links we discussed:
Dhawal's article: Here are 850+ Ivy League Courses You Can Take Right Now for Free: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/ivy-league-free-online-courses-a0d7ae675869/
Dhawal's article: I uncovered 1700 Coursera Courses that Are Still Completely Free: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/coursera-free-online-courses-6d84cdb30da/
Dhawal on Twitter: https://twitter.com/dhawalhshah
Dhawal's 3 recommended Massive Open Online Courses:
- Learning How to Learn: Powerful mental tools to help you master tough subjects: https://www.classcentral.com/course/learning-how-to-learn-2161
- University of Alberta's Mountains 101 Course: https://www.classcentral.com/course/mountains-101-7455
- Stanford's Data Structures and Algorithms Course: https://www.classcentral.com/course/algorithms-18869
I interview Bruno Haid. He's a software engineer and tech founder from Austria.
We talk about growing up in the European countryside, his early passion for computers, and ultimately his move to San Francisco, where he's founded several tech companies.
Bruno's super excited about embedded systems and custom hardware. He's building home appliances that incorporate open source software and open datasets.
We talk about so many topics here. From Star Trek to the European Pirate Party.
I hope these weekly freeCodeCamp podcasts are firing you up about learning more about technology.
Tell your friends about the freeCodeCamp podcast. Let's inspire more folks to learn to code and build careers for themselves in tech.
A couple interesting links from our discussion:
"Only Amiga" song from Comdex 1987: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWeO5IkCssk
Halt and Catch Fire TV Show trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWrioRji60A
Today I'm joined by Dr. Curran Kelleher. He's a data visualization expert and has taught a number of in-depth data visualization courses on freeCodeCamp's YouTube channel.
We talk about what it's like to get a Ph.D. under one of the pioneers of data visualization.
We also talk about how he uses his visualization skills in industry, his many years living in India, and his love of teaching.
I think you're going to walk away with a deeper understanding of data, the human brain, and how we process information. You'll also learn some practical career tips.
I hope these weekly freeCodeCamp podcasts are firing you up about learning more about technology.
Tell your friends about the freeCodeCamp podcast. Let's inspire more folks to learn to code and build careers for themselves in tech.
Some relevant links from our discussion:
Curran's 20-hour Data Visualization with D3 course on freeCodeCamp: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/data-visualizatoin-with-d3/
"Semiology of Graphics: Diagrams, Networks, Maps" book Curran mentions: https://www.esri.com/en-us/esri-press/browse/semiology-of-graphics-diagrams-networks-maps
Curran's portfolio of work: https://github.com/curran/portfolio
Bret Victor's talk "Inventing on Principle"： https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGYGl_xxfXA
On this week's podcast, I meet with Arian Agrawal in New York City to talk about her journey into tech startups.
Arian grew up in New York and studied at MIT. She worked in finance for a few years, then built her own Ecommerce Marketplace startup with a friend.
Along the way, Arian went through the South Park Commons startup accelerator, and she now leads their New York City branch as a partner.
We talk about technology, startups, and her journey from finance to building products.
I hope you're digging these weekly freeCodeCamp podcasts. Be sure to leave us a review. And download a few episodes so you can learn on the go.
Tell your friends about the freeCodeCamp podcast. Let's inspire more folks to learn to code and build careers for themselves in tech.
Arian on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AgrawalArian
Arian on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arian-agrawal-46639439/
South Park Commons: https://www.southparkcommons.com/
Today I'm joined by Joel Spolsky. He's co-founder of Trello and Stack Overflow, and author of the iconic developer blog Joel on Software.
I hung out with Joel in his New York City home to discuss his 4-decade-long career as a developer and a CEO. He shared his insights on software engineering, product design, running companies, and how he uses AI as a tool.
This interview is the culmination of years of learning from Joel through his blog and using the tools he's helped make. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Be sure to follow The freeCodeCamp podcast in your favorite podcast app. And share this podcast with a friend. Let's inspire more folks to learn to code and build careers for themselves in tech.
The Joel Test: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/08/09/the-joel-test-12-steps-to-better-code/
Making Better Software video course series from the early 2000's playlist on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBfisaHMr-8&list=PLcIkt5s7w8D0ywp0CBmNFWRTFZic3pWNn
The ESP-32 microcontroller Joel mentioned: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESP32
Today I'm joined by Kevin Miller. He's a senior developer and host of the Coder Conversations YouTube channel.
Kevin studied accounting in Texas and worked overnight for 7 years at hotels, making only $11 an hour. But his knowledge of spreadsheets lead to him learning more about programming and automation.
After spending a year living with his parents and teaching himself to code full time, Kevin landed his first developer job. He immediately tripled his income.
Kevin has since worked as a dev at several Fortune 500 companies. But it's been a bumpy ride. He's been laid off 3 times due to mergers and employers just running out of money.
He started Coder Conversations as a way for him and fellow developers to talk about technology and share career advice. He now has 200 episodes.
I hope you're digging these weekly freeCodeCamp podcasts. Be sure to leave us a review. And download a few episodes so you can learn on the go.
Tell your friends about the freeCodeCamp podcast. Let's inspire more folks to learn to code and build careers for themselves in tech.
Coder Conversations: https://www.youtube.com/@coderconvos254
Kevin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevm254
This is it – my full FREE 2023 book in audiobook format. How to Learn to Code and Get a Developer Job. Written, read, edited, mixed, and mastered by me, Quincy Larson.
The text version of the book (also free): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-to-code-book/
Table of Contents:
Preface: Who is this book for?
500 Word Executive Summary
Chapter 1: How to Build Your Skills
Chapter 2: How to Build Your Network
Chapter 3: How to Build Your Reputation
Chapter 4: How to Get Paid to Code – Freelance Clients and the Job Search
Chapter 5: How to Succeed in Your First Developer Job
Epilogue: You Can Do This
Song "From the Ground Up" by Quincy Larson from the Learn to Code RPG Original Soundtrack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TDsGUFFXSY
Additional Reading:
Article: How to Contribute to Open Source: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-contribute-to-open-source-projects-beginners-guide/
Article: We fired our top talent. Best decision we ever made: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/we-fired-our-top-talent-best-decision-we-ever-made-4c0a99728fde/
Article: How to negotiate your developer job offer salary: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/salary-negotiation-how-not-to-set-a-bunch-of-money-on-fire-605aabbaf84b/
Article: How to ask for a raise as a developer: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/youre-underpaid-here-s-how-you-can-get-the-pay-raise-you-deserve-fafcf52956d6/
Article: Why recruiters are an underrated tool in your toolbox: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/the-tech-recruiter-red-pill-967dd492560c/
Today I'm joined by Lynn Zheng. She's a software engineer at freeCodeCamp and at Salesforce.
Lynn grew up in Shenzhen, China – the computer hardware capital of the world. Both of her parents were engineers. And from an early age, they encouraged Lynn to learn math and computer science. She got into the prestigious Computer Science program at University of Chicago, where she earned both Bachelors and Masters degree – all by the age of 21.
I met up with Lynn at the Redwood City Public Library in the heart of Silicon Valley. But they didn't have any study rooms available. so we climbed to a nearby rooftop and recorded there.
We talk about Lynn's many game development projects, which culminated in Learn to Code RPG, a Visual Novel game where you learn to code and get a developer job. And we talk about her experience working as an engineer at one of the largest tech companies in the world, even as she's stuck in work visa limbo.
Next week will be our 100th episode, and I've got something extra special in store for you.
Tell your friends about the freeCodeCamp podcast. Let's inspire more folks to learn to code and build careers for themsleves in tech.
Learn to Code RPG: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-to-code-rpg/
Lynn's Stable Diffusion course: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/stable-diffusion-crash-course/
Lynn on Twitter: https://twitter.com/lynnzheng08
Lynn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruolin-zheng/
Ben Dunphy studied international relations and had a short career in finance. Among other things, he co-authored a bill that eventually got passed in his state of New Hampshire.
But Ben saw the writing on the wall – that technology was becoming one of the most powerful ways to affect change. He learned to code and moved to San Francisco, where he and I first met back in 2013.
He built Real World React – a series of evening events and corporate training programs – and ultimately helped launched conferences like Reactathon and JAMstack conf. And now he's helping run the upcoming AI Engineer Summit.
I talk with Ben about his journey into tech and the lessons he's learned along the way. And if you're considering creating a tech event in your city, boy has Ben got some tips for you.
I hope you're digging these weekly freeCodeCamp podcasts. Be sure to leave us a review. And download a few episodes so you can learn on the go. Not only do we have Spanish and Chinese podcasts, but we just launched our Portuguese podcast as well.
And tell your friends. Let's inspire more folks to learn to code and build careers for themsleves in tech.
Ben on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Benghamine
Ben on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamindunphy/
The Rise of the AI Engineer article by Shawn Wang AKA Swyx: https://www.latent.space/p/ai-engineer
The AI Engineer Summit Oct 9, 2023 through Oct 11 in San Francisco: https://www.ai.engineer/summit
The Isabella Gardner Museum in Boston: https://www.gardnermuseum.org/
Eric Leung grew up in Oklahoma and learned a lot of math in high school. His friends wanted to go to medical school and he originally planned to join them. But instead he got interested in the emerging field of bioinformatics – math applied to medicine.
After 6 years in graduate school, he made the big decision to leave without completing his Ph.D. But he was able to transition into the field of data science, and he now works as a data scientist at Disney.
Eric and I met up at a public library here in Dallas, Texas to talk about his journey into data science, including his time spent learning through freeCodeCamp and ultimately contributing to our open source codebase.
We also share our love of the US public library system, where we met to record this and where Eric worked when he was younger. And we talk about the ancient board game of Go.
If you dig this podcast, you should leave us a review in whichever podcast player you're listening. It helps more people discover the show.
Download some of our previous podcasts to your phone so you'll have something to listen to the next time you're offline.
And tell your friends. Let's inspire more folks to learn to code and build careers for themsleves in tech. Eric Leung's freeCodeCamp articles: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/author/erictleung/
Eric on Twitter: https://twitter.com/erictleung
The Standup Maths Minecraft Speed Run Cheating Scandal we talk about during the show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ko3TdPy0TU
The AlphaGo documentary about Deep Mind's efforts to conquer the ancient game of Go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXuK6gekU1Y
XKCD comic on when to automate things: https://xkcd.com/1205/
Math for Programmers book: https://www.manning.com/books/math-for-programmers
Street Fighting Math MIT course: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/18-098-street-fighting-mathematics-january-iap-2008/
Today I'm joined by Patrick San Juan, a software engineer who first learned to code in his 30s.
I've known Patrick since the early days of freeCodeCamp. He has always been a positive, supportive force within the community.
Patrick grew up the son of first-generation immigrants from the Philippines. His family didn't have much money, and what they did have, they plowed into his education. He studied economics at the University of California at Santa Cruz, then went to work at a charity focused on helping underserved youth.
After 5 years, Patrick decided to transition into a career where he could better support his family. And for him, that meant learning to code.
I hung out with Patrick at the Alameda Public Library, in the San Francisco Bay Area where Patrick lives. We talk about the ups and downs of his journey into tech. Patrick doesn't sugarcoat anything. Getting a job as a developer is hard. But he's proof that with sustained effort, you can build a career for yourself in tech.
I'm proud of Patrick and his achievements. And I'm proud to be the first person to ever interview him for a podcast.
If you dig this podcast, be sure to leave us a review. And tell your friends about this show. Let's inspire more folks to learn to code and build careers for themsleves in tech.
Patrick on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patricksanjuan/
Today I'm joined by Malindi Colyer. Among her many skills, she's a Python developer and AI engineer.
Malindi grew up on a farm in rural Kansas, in the middle of the US. She trained to become a diplomat, and volunteered overseas. But along the way, she discovered a love of math and computer science. That passion has landed her jobs in New York City, London, and San Francisco.
I met up with Malindi in downtown Manhattan to learn all about investment banking, and how she modernized her department at JP Morgan using her software engineering skills. We talk about the high-stakes world of global finance, where she was executing trades sometimes worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
We also talk about her time as a venture capitalist. She researched thousands of startups to decide which ones her fund should invest in.
This is one of the most technical interviews I've done. I've done my best to make Malindi's world of math, AI, and high finance as accessible as I can. I hope you enjoy it.
Malindi on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandra-malindi-colyer-46b95589/
#94 Killing Cancer with Machine Learning with Dr. Amit Deshwar
Today I'm joined by Dr. Amit Deshwar. He uses machine learning to discover new drugs to cure various diseases including cancer. He's a scientist who works in the growing field of Computational Biology, and has risen through the ranks at the Canadian biotech company Deep Genomics.
During College, Amit got two internships at Google as a platform engineer. He then decided rather than working in big tech he wanted to go back to school and get his Ph.D. He studied Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto, and had his work published in Nature, one of the most prestigious scientific journals.
I met up with Amit at the Glen Park library in San Francisco, at the exact table where the FBI arrested notorious Slik Road Darknet marketplace founder Ross Ulbricht.
We talk about how scientists and developers use machine learning to speed up drug discovery. I ask him a lot of my totally naive questions about how these therapies work and how they can fight various types of cancer and other diseases.
Photo of Amit arresating me at the Glen Park Library where the FBI arrested Ross Ulbright: https://drive.google.com/file/d/15B8HD4SGErnOd8zA-9gYW2MabAQFG58Q/view?usp=sharing
Photo of me arresting Amit: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OWyaVyzqT8YgLFYUVi5kqY9te6ShSdgr/view?usp=sharing
Amit on Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=QGCYxysAAAAJ
Amit's Twitter: https://twitter.com/amitdeshwar
Today I'm talking with programmer legend Jeff Atwood. Jeff co-founded Stack Overflow with Joel Spolsky back in 2008. And software development has never been the same.
Jeff also co-founded Discourse, a beloved forum tool used by Apple, Roblox, and of course the freeCodeCamp community. And Jeff is a prolific writer through his blog, Coding Horror.
I met up with Jeff at his home in the San Francisco Bay Area, and interviewed him in the room where he builds so many of his software projects.
We talked about software development and community building. Among other things, he shared his thoughts on Large Language Models, VR, and Self-Driving Cars.
If you dig this podcast, be sure to leave us a review. I'm excited to read any feedback you have for me.
And tell your friends. It's a huge help for us. We're still early days with The freeCodeCamp Podcast. I'm interviewing so many other inspiring developers in the coming weeks.
Jeff's Blog, Coding Horror: https://blog.codinghorror.com/
Today I'm talking with Sean Smith, one of freeCodeCamp's earliest graduates. Sean's also a prolific open source contributor, having helped develop freeCodeCamp's original React curriculum.
Sean grew up in Tenessee and was an avid outdoorsman and rock climber. He went to college hoping to become a doctor. He even interned at the National Institutes of Health and published in the Journal of Virology.
But one day he decided to leave the field – with no clear plans for the future – Leaving his friends and family puzzled.
For two years, Sean worked at climbing gyms across Tenessee as a route setter, climbing the walls and installing climbing holds. And one day he decided he needed to learn to code.
I caught up with Sean in downtown San Francisco, in a café that both he and I had coincidentally worked out of early in our developer careers.
I learned a lot about Sean's journey into tech that took him from working in San Francisco to Singapore to Taipei.
And spoiler alert: during the podcast we talk about Sean's job search. I'm happy to report that since I interviewed him last month, he's landed a developer job at a company focused on AI and e-commerce.
If you dig this podcast, be sure to leave us a review. I'm excited to read any feedback you have for me. And tell your friends. It really helps us inspire more people.
Sean Smith on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanmatthewsmith/
Today I'm talking with Sasha Sheng. She's a software engineer who worked at Yahoo and at Facebook. During her 9 years working at big tech companies in San Francisco, she worked on mobile apps and AI systems.
Sasha grew up in rural China, and was the first person in her family to attend university. She studied hard and was able to get into one of China's most competitive schools. She was able to move to the US and finish out her Mechanical Engineering degree at University of Michigan.
When Sasha got laid off 8 months ago, she hit the ground running. She immersed herself in learning the new wave of AI tools. And she applied those new skills at hackathons, winning several competitive events.
I caught up with Sasha to hear her thoughts on AI engineering, AI safety, and how we can get more women into tech.
If you dig this podcast, be sure to leave us a review. I'm excited to read any feedback you have for me.
Check out Sasha on Instagram: www.instagram.com/hackgoofer
Follow Sasha on Twitter: and www.twitter.com/hackgoofer
One of Sasha's Hackathon projects: Chat Out Loud: https://github.com/ytsheng/chat_out_loud_gpt
Today I'm joined by Shawn Wang, AKA Swyx. I first interviewed Shawn in 2019. Back then, Shawn had quit his $350k a year finance job and taught himself to code using freeCodeCamp. He was working as a full stack engineer. It's a wild interview that you should go back and listen to... after of course you finish listening this.
Now a lot of people thought Shawn was crazy leaving finance. But this dude knew what he was doing. He has now risen through the ranks as a developer at tech startups. And now he's starting an AI startup of his own. He's already off to a strong start, having raised a $3 million pre-seed round from investors.
This is the first time I've ever invited a guest return to the freeCodeCamp podcast for a second interview. And there was so much to talk about, I feel like I could have interviewed Shawn for days.
The man has been eating, sleeping, and breathing AI engineering for the past year. I learned so much from talking with him. I'm confident that you will, too.
Watch Swyx's AI Engineering conference live stream: https://ai.engineer
The Latent Space Podcast: https://www.latent.space/podcast
Follow Swyx on Twitter: https://twitter.com/swyx
Today I'm interviewing a long-time friend and role model of mine, Megan Kaczanowski. We met up in Brooklyn to talk about her journey into information security.
She studied economics at University of Michigan before working in finance in New York City. But her ambitions lead her into cyber security – first as a threat analyst at a credit rating agency, and later as a Security Architect at a bank and a startups.
Over the years, she's volunteered at charities around New York, and she's authored dozens of security tutorials as a contributor to freeCodeCamp.
We talk about her journey into tech and her advice for folks getting into security – especially women. As with every time I talk with Megan, I learned a lot. And I hope you'll a lot, too.
If you dig this podcast, be sure to leave us a review. I'm excited to read any feedback you have for me.
And tell your friends.
Megan's many information security tutorials on freeCodeCamp: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/author/megansdoingfine/
Follow Megan on Twitter: https://twitter.com/megansdoingfine
Read the book she mentioned about the first ever worm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo%27s_Egg_(book)
Watch Mr. Robot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U94litUpZuc
today I'm joined by Brian Douglas. He's a software engineer who's worked at tech companies like GitHub and Netlify. And now he's an entrepreur runs his own startup – OpenSauced.pizza.
Brian grew up in a small town in Florida, and his family was the only black family in town. He worked hard in school and earned a full scholarship to Florida State University, where he studied business.
He started off working in sales, but gradually taught himself how to code. It took a while to get into the software, but he was ultimately able to move his family out to the San Francisco Bay Area.
If you dig this podcast, be sure to leave us a review. And tell your friends.
Follow Brian Douglas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/bdougieYO
And check out his open source tool: https://opensauced.pizza
Today I'm joined by Sarah Shook is a software engineer who started out as a recruiter, then started learning system administration on the job at a school.
She didn't finish university. She learned to code on the job, from studying freeCodeCamp, and from attending a short bootcamp that she won free admission to. And she did all of this while raising 3 kids.
She is a career-long remote worker, and insists she will never work somewhere where she needs to be away from her kids. Today she runs software development agency and works with clients.
Sarah and I talk about her coding journey, how she's worked to overcome depression and severe shyness, and her love of front end libraries like Tailwind CSS.
If you dig this podcast, be sure to leave us a review. And tell your friends. It really helps.
Without further ado, my interview with Sarah Shook.
Sarah Shook on Twitter: https://twitter.com/shookcodes
Welcome back to the freeCodeCamp Podcast.
I'm Quincy Larson, teacher and founder of freeCodeCamp.org. And I'm bringing you insight from developers, entrepreneurs, and ambitious people getting into tech.
It's been 4 years since we published a podcast episode. It's good to be back.
This is the first of three interviews I'm publishing this week – my interview with Danny Thompson. Danny's a bit a legend among career changers.
He had a kid early in life. For 10 years he worked at a gas station in Tennessee, frying chicken for people to eat. He sometimes worked 80 hour weeks just to provide for his family.
And yet, Danny had ambition. He taught himself to code using freeCodeCamp. He built his network through local tech events. And eventually, he landed his first job as as software developer.
Danny's since worked at tech companies like Google and Front Door, and he's now a software engineer at AutoZone, a major US retail chain.
Danny has helped so many people along the way. He's developed a free course on how to leverage LinkedIn as a developer. And he's helped start a ton of local developer meetups.
I couldn't dream of a better interview to kick off this new season of the freeCodeCamp podcast.
New season. That's right. I've got dozen interviews lined up, and I'm recording these all in-person, in public libraries across Dallas, San Francisco, and New York City.
I'm publishing 3 episodes this week, and then a new episode every Friday.
We're talking about DevOps, cybersecurity, AI – tons of topics that I know you're gonna find helpful as you continue to expand your skills.
If you dig this podcast, be sure to leave us a review. And tell your friends.
Danny on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DThompsonDev
In this special crossover episode, we celebrate 10 years of The Changelog. It's the home of the biggest podcast focused on open source, and a favorite of freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson.
This 4-hour episode is actually 2 interviews:
1. For the first 2.5 hours, Quincy interviews Changelog co-hosts Adam Stacoviak and Jerod Santo about how they got into software development and podcasting, and the history of their legendary podcast.
2. Then we end with Adam and Jerod turning the tables and interviewing Quincy about the past and future of freeCodeCamp.org.
If you haven't heard of The Changelog before, it is website that hosts a podcast about open source software. Each week they interview new developers from around the software galaxy and explore what makes those projects tick.
Adam Stacoviak founded The Changelog exactly 10 years ago. And Jerod Santo joined as co-host 7 years ago. Together - across 370 episodes - they've interviewed everyone from programmer legends, to the maintainers of open source projects you may have never even heard of.
Quincy has listened to hundreds of The Changelog episodes over the years, and credits The Changelog with giving him such a broad view of open source, and the philosophies of the developers who started these projects.
These interviews were conducted in-person in Adam's Houston-based studio.
If you haven't yet, you should subscribe to The Changelog podcast. They have a variety of shows. We recommend starting with their Master Feed, which lets you explore all of their shows: https://changelog.com/master
And check out the special website they built to celebrate their 10 year anniversary: changelog.com/ten
Follow Adam on Twitter: https://twitter.com/adamstac Follow Jerod on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jerodsanto And Quincy is: https://twitter.com/ossia
This week, for the last podcast episode of 2019, Abbey chatted with freelancer and content creator Jessica Chan - known as CoderCoder on social media - about how she got into tech and started her educational website and YouTube channel.
On today's episode of the podcast, Abbey chats with software engineer Jackson Bates who lives and works in Melbourne, Australia.
Jackson used to be a high school English teacher, but gradually taught himself to code and landed a pretty sweet gig as a React dev, partly by chance. Today he works part time as a developer, part time as a stay at home dad, and volunteers his time with various open source projects.
Jackson grew up in England, and studied English in school. Although going into education seemed a logical choice, he dabbled in other fields - like working at a prison cafeteria - for a while before landing a teaching job.
That first job had some unpleasant aspects, and he began to doubt if teaching was for him. After moving to Australia to be with his wife, he started dabbling in basic HTML and CSS. Even though he continued teaching high school English, Jackson couldn't tear himself away from coding completely.
We’ve all got computers, but being able to write code and make your computer do something – once you learn to do that it becomes quite an addictive thing. I just loved the problem solving aspect and how creative you could be.
After about six years of teaching without all the proper Australian certifications, he decided to go back to school and get his masters.
He budgeted a bit too much time for his studies, however, and ended up with six months before he was scheduled to go back to work. So he dove back into learning more about coding.
And those teaching skills? They came in quite handy when he was teaching himself to code.
As a teacher, you kind of understand what it really takes to learn something. When you’ve helped 11-18 year olds overcome really frustrating experiences in their own learning, you learn to give yourself a break when you hit roadblocks. You learn to put in the work that’s necessary, but you get a more realistic expectation of the timeframes involved to learn something.
And he was hooked. He got through one more year of teaching before deciding to try to get a job as a software engineer.
But the job hunt sucked. While this was no surprise, it was particularly demoralizing when he was rejected for the most basic role for which he felt quite overqualified.
I always had it in the back of my mind that I was never really ready enough – and I know everyone always says oh I’ll just finish this certification and brush up my CV and do this course…we always give ourselves a million reasons not to do it, and really those reasons will always be there.
At that point, a friend encouraged him to try out a new meetup group, just for the heck of it. So he went. And ended up meeting his future boss.
You might get knocked back from things you’re overqualified for – but it only takes the right person to see you and decide you’d be a good fit for their team, and then all the rejections don’t matter anymore. You just have to keep putting yourself out there.
A tentative follow-up email, a quick round of interviews, and an onsite later, he had the job. It was an excellent cultural fit, and he's never looked back. He gets to work on fun internal projects, support the data scientists on his team, and pick up new skills constantly.
And he's even developed a refreshing perspective on debugging and facing challenges in his code:
I really like working with broken code. Because you know staring down a bug until you’ve fixed it really gives you a better understanding of the whole thing that you’re trying to do. Even though it’s a bit slow, it helps it sink in a bit more.
Now, 14 months later, he's learned a lot about different tech, Machine Learning, how to learn new skills, and what it takes to switch careers.
It really is a long game that you’re playing. It’s easy to be discouraged, but people have made the change you’re trying to make. It feels impossible but people do actually do it.
In this episode, Jackson offers valuable advice about job hunting, finding your learning style, dealing with imposter syndrome, and how to take chances - among many other things.
Find Jackson on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jacksonbates
Quincy interviews Jeff Meyerson, the creator and host of the Software Engineering Daily podcast.
Jeff grew up in Texas, played competitive poker, and ultimately worked as a software engineer at Amazon.
We talk about how he got into tech, how left Amazon to become an entrepreneur, and the many lessons he learned along the way.
Follow Jeff on Twitter: https://twitter.com/the_prion
And subscribe to software engineering daily: https://softwareengineeringdaily.com
In this week's episode of the freeCodeCamp podcast, Quincy Larson interviews Ruben Harris, who runs Career Karma, a social network for people interested in attending coding bootcamp. He also hosts the Breaking into Startups Podcast.
Ruben just finished Y Combinator, a startup accelerator, where he and his team raised their first round of venture capital funding.
Ruben grew up in Atlanta and worked in finance. He met his future co-founders - Ukrainian-born brothers Artur and Timur Meyster - years ago. The three of them agreed to spread out, get jobs in different industries, then later regroup to build a startup together.
Ruben shares his insights on coding bootcamps. He also shares what he learned going through Y Combinator. And he talks about his close bond with his co-founders.
Follow Ruben on Twitter: https://twitter.com/rubenharris
Follow Quincy on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ossia
Subscribe to the Breaking Into Startups podcast: https://breakingintostartups.com/
Ruben interviews Quincy way back in 2017 (50 minute listen): https://breakingintostartups.com/quincy-free-code-camp/
Ruben interviews Gary V (an episode he mentions during this interview): https://breakingintostartups.com/76-gary-vaynerchuk-ceo-vaynermedia/
On this week's episode of the freeCodeCamp podcast, Abbey interviews senior software engineer and prolific content creator Ohans Emmanuel. They discuss how he got into tech, how he ended up in Berlin, what goes into writing a book, and how he stays focused through it all.
When Ohans was young, he learned a very important lesson from his parents: you must take responsibility for yourself and your actions. He was lucky enough to grow up with a computer in the house, and gradually learned computer basics.
In school, he studied engineering, but didn't learn much programming. So he had to teach himself. And it was hard. He lacked a community, had to struggle through things on his own, and felt like it was much harder than it needed to be.
"I don't understand what it was - I was a smart student, but when I started to teach myself to learn how to code, that was the most difficult thing I had to teach myself to do. I was really on my own, I didn't join any groups. It was really just me trying to figure out the road map for myself. And that was really difficult."
But having a supportive mentor helped. And eventually he started freelancing and teaching young adults how to code. He also began to fall in love with design and writing. As his passion for design grew, he began to appreciate its usefulness as well:
"There is something about a front-end engineer who understands design. You see things differently. You can have meaningful conversations with the designers, and you have different opinions. You're not just building stuff - you understand how it affects the users."
As Ohans learned more skills and came across more and more tough topics, he decided to research and then write about them. Again and again. He has written a number of free, full-length books about React, Redux, CSS, and many other topics. And his approach to the process is unsurprisingly organized and measured.
"The first step is deciding what to write about. So I find a subject that is challenging or that I think maybe the community hasn't really explored. Or if I think that a lot of beginners are finding this subject difficult, it just makes me want to write about it more."
"I'm really passionate about teaching things in plain, simple language. So you take a difficult subject and you break it down. It's so much fun. And when you do this over and over, it helps a lot of people. And it puts smiles on my face."
Now isn't that enthusiasm contagious?
In addition to writing books and articles and helping kids learn to code, Ohans has a full-time software engineering job in Berlin. Deciding to make the move away from friends and family wasn't easy, but with their support he went for it.
During the interview process, he learned a lot about job interviews in general and what it took to go through them successfully. He believes being good at your job as an engineer and being good at interviews are two very different things.
Despite this, Ohans believes that anyone can conquer the interview process. And his go-to advice?
"Just smile. It keeps you calm and makes the interviewer calm as well. They want to give you time and let you think. You're smart, you can do it - you just have to stay calm and figure it out."
Part of Ohans' success is derived from his commitment to deep work and deep focus. He firmly believes that anyone can learn anything if they put their mind to it and have a plan.
"I believe that the act of focus itself is a skill - just as much as you can learn to play the piano, you can learn to focus as well. And I think people really need to take their attention as seriously as possible. If you covet your attention, and take it like it's important, I think you'll be careful how you spend your time."
In this interview, we discuss how he overcame the obstacles he faced when learning to code alone, how he got a job in another country, how he creates so much valuable, free content, and how he advises new developers to approach interviews, mentors, and many other tough subjects.
"If you try something for a day and it doesn't work, go on and try it for a week. If it still doesn't work, try for two weeks. If it still doesn't work, re-evaluate what you're doing. If you still think you're heading in the right direction, try for another month. Or two months. And if you're still sure you're going in the right direction, don't give up - you're gonna get it.
On this week's episode of the freeCodeCamp podcast, Abbey chats with UX designer and musician Andi Galpern about how she creates engaging and unique experiences in the tech world. Andi shares stories about past jobs, how she started her company, her favorite moments from events she's produced, and how to break into the design market.
Andi grew up in Florida and was first and foremost a musician at heart. Once she decided that she needed a plan other than becoming a rockstar, she picked up and moved across country to the Bay Area. After attending various tech events and taking photos, she started making connections and growing a network.
In between regular jobs, she was trying to learn more about design - but couldn't find any meetups or events that fit the bill. So she started creating her own. And they were successful.
After a while, she founded her company, Cascade SF, with the goal of helping other designers, product managers, and engineers learn more, meet other people in the community, and help each other out.
As her strategy and process changed, so did her events.
"I used to only get big name speakers. But now that I'm in control of the content, I help designers, product managers, and people in tech tell their stories. I help them design a program so they can share their knowledge and we can create more people like them. So it's more about creating new leaders, and creating content the industry needs."
Andi kept learning more and more about different facets of design, and she shared many insights she gained along the way.
"The product design process is holistic and a lot like life. We don't have to have all the answers, we just have to be willing to watch people try things out and grow and learn. There are no mistakes, there are only hypotheses and data and making decisions."
Once her events grew large enough, and she started holding after work conferences, she realized the importance of a new skill: asking for what she wanted.
"Asking for what you need or want can be really scary. But sometimes you're pleasantly surprised - you get a response back. You never really know unless you ask.
But organizing a successful event requires much more than that. For Andi, it's all about the quality of the content. She does her research, figures out what people want, and then puts it all together.
"Great design is about content first, so it's about comprehension. Make sure the purpose of the event is clear. You can continue to keep tweaking your design until everyone gets it immediately. You just have to distill it down into your one core message."
"A big part of UX design is just making things simpler and more usable so people can enjoy their lives more."
Now, hundreds of events and conferences later, she's running Cascade, working as a content strategist for growth at Adobe, volunteering with various organizations, dabbling back in photography and music, and dreaming of expanding her brand to different cities.
In this episode, Andi shares advice on how to put on a successful tech event, how to survive the job interview process, and how to learn all sorts of design skills. We discuss challenges she's faced, solutions she's created, and why she loves pinball so much, among many other things.
Find Andi on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/andigalpern
Find Abbey on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/abbeyrenn
In this week's podcast episode of the freeCodeCamp podcast, Abbey chats with Harry Wolff, an engineering manager at MongoDB in New York City.
Harry has been in the world of tech for over a decade, holding jobs in various startups before ending up at Mongo. They discuss his journey to his current managerial role, what it's like to work at Mongo, how to start a meetup, and dos and don't for migrating from legacy codebases.
Harry started his tech career working for startups. He liked the excitement, he liked learning new things, and he liked showing off his skills. After working for a few startups, he stumbled upon a position at MongoDB. One short week after beginning the interview process, he was in.
The decision to leave his previous job was easier than he expected, and he reflected on the reasons he made the change:
"For me, it was a matter of taking what I could from my job at the time, but knowing when it was time to move on. One of the ways you know it's time to leave is when the company's getting more out of you than you're getting out of the company."Once Harry was settled in at Mongo, he got right to work. After a couple years as an engineer working on various projects, he achieved one of his major goals and became a manager.
Harry and I discussed his relatively new position in detail, and while he's still figuring things out, he has some valuable insights into his transition.
"One of the most difficult things about being a manager is that there's no easy way to evaluate the success of your day. There are no milestones to say you've accomplished a lot. You might have a eureka! moment where you figure something out, but you're definitely living in the grey a lot more. Because it's people - they change by the day and hour and minute."But one of the best things for Harry is how much he gets to learn - constantly, from many different people, and about many different things. In addition to reading about new programming languages, discussing what's new in the JavaScript ecosystem in his podcast, and making every effort to stay on top of new tech, Harry has learned more nuanced skills as well.
"One hard skill I needed to learn was being assertive and truthful when I needed to be. Most humans prefer that uncomfortable situations just resolve themselves...but if you wait six months [to deal with something], it becomes a dealbreaker."In addition to managing his team, working on his podcast, YouTube channel, and blog, and reading programming handbooks for fun, Harry has been working to update MongoDB's tech stack and move away from their legacy codebase. In the process, he's developed some insights into such migrations.
"You have to have a good reason for doing it. And part of this is scolding my former self who would say 'yeah, just do it!' But having learned more, you need to have a good reason. For us, it's more maintainable, less error-prone, and better for recruiting." "But don't rewrite everything - that's seldom the right answer. Occasionally there are exceptions, but they're exceptions."When Harry isn't working or creating content, he hangs out with his wife and new son in New York. He encourages people getting into tech to keep at it and not get discouraged.
"Never give up. Just keep hustling. Take with a grain of salt the feedback you get from companies and have confidence in what you do and don't know. And stay humble. It's hard but you have to just want it and keep hustling and stay curious."
Find Harry on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/hswolff
Find Abbey on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/abbeyrenn
This week, I got to chat with Briana Swift, who used to teach music to elementary school children. She loved teaching and loved her job, but realized it wasn't what she wanted to do for the rest of her life. So she started looking around for what might be the next steps, and started learning about the world of tech.
After going to a number of meetups and looking around online for various free resources, she stumbled upon freeCodeCamp. Over the course of a couple years, she got her full-stack certification while sharing videos of herself learning various concepts.
When she started looking for a job, she experienced what so many new developers experience: rejection and frustration. She had to adapt, learn how to learn, and keep trying.
But one day, after attending a random meetup, someone drew her attention to a role at GitHub that seemed tailor-made for her skill set. Doubting that she'd get through the interview process, she applied anyway - and got the job. She identifies a few of the skills that helped her get the job:
"On the one hand, it was the actual skills I learned [before working at GitHub]. But on the other hand it was the mindset. Because even if I'd learned everything perfectly 2-3 years ago, it was such a different ecosystem out there now. Knowing how to search the documentation or find the answer or Google to get what you need - I don't think that will ever go out of style."
Three and a half years later, she's worked her way up through a couple different roles at GitHub and couldn't be happier with her job. She's learned how work with a diverse and passionate team, she's learned how to stand up for herself, and she's come to appreciate how much soft skills matter.
"Anything that's a technical thing can be learned. But working with a bunch of really smart, passionate people can be challenging because they're so passionate. And I think navigating that and trying to meet people where they are while still getting the best work done that I can is something I'll be working on for the rest of my life."
One thing she emphasizes again and again throughout our chat was not being afraid to ask questions and have confidence in yourself:
"Ask questions even if you think it's gonna make you look dumb. Sometimes no one else is asking because they want to look smart. But on the other hand, trust yourself - don't let anyone convince you that you don't know something if you've done your research. You can be the person who asks dumb questions and the person who's an expert on something at the same time."
In this episode, we discuss how she transitioned into tech, how she learned all the skills she needed to work at GitHub - and how she continues to learn, what she does to support diversity in her tech community, and how she stays fueled up and motivated day to day.
She's gained a lot of insight on creativity, and shared her perspective on staying creative:
"Creativity is like a body of water. And if you let yourself become like a pond, where nothing's coming in, then nothing's gonna go out. If you want something to go out, you have to have new experiences, new things going in."
Briana also offers advice on learning to code, asking questions, achieving balance in your life, and being a good team member, among many other things.
Find Briana on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/brianamarie132
Find Abbey on Twitter here: http://twitter.com/abbeyrenn
In this week's episode of the freeCodeCamp podcast, Abbey chats with software developer and freelancer Kyle Prinsloo who lives and works in South Africa.
Kyle knew from a young age that he wanted to pursue a career in business. He launched websites with his brother, worked various jobs, and eventually gained experience in marketing and tech.
Although he had a job he enjoyed working for people he respected, he wanted more from his work and life. He wanted to marry his now wife, and he wanted to be his own boss. So he started doing some freelancing work on the side.
Little by little, as he built relationships with clients and gained more experience, his portfolio grew and he started making more from his side business than from his regular job. So he decided to make a change.
In this podcast, you'll learn how he launched his business and educational website, how he prices his services, and how he advises others to become successful freelancers as well. Kyle offers actionable tips on gaining experience, shares anecdotes from his own journey, and discusses how he balances his many responsibilities.
You can connect with Kyle on Instagram.
Check out his website here.
In this week's episode of the freeCodeCamp podcast, Abbey chats with software developer and army veteran Jami Gibbs about her journey into tech.
Jami was born and raised in the Chicago area, and her first encounter with programming was in high school. While majoring in English in college, she joined the National Guard and did several tours overseas.
During her time in the army, she came back to the world of tech and started learning more about coding. After leaving the military and finishing her English degree, she realized she wanted to switch careers and commit to becoming a software developer.
She taught herself most of what she knows, supplemented it with a boot camp, and got her first job working on WordPress themes. Through building a number of side projects, enhancing her skills, and working her way up to other tech jobs, Jami reached her current position as a software engineer in Chicago.
When she's not spending all her free time coding, she runs races, enjoys the Chicago craft beer scene, and roots for the Chicago Bears.
In this episode, Jami discusses the hiring process, what it was like getting a tech job in her 30s, how her time in the army helped during the job hunt, and more.
Find Jami on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/JamiGibbs
Find Abbey on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/abbeyrenn
On this week's episode of the freeCodeCamp podcast, Abbey chats with London-based software engineer Linh about how she left the field of biochemical engineering, taught herself to code, struggled to get her first dev job, and now gets to work at LEGO.
Linh moved to England when she was 11 years old. She spoke no English, but quickly learned and settled into her life there. She became fascinated with cosmetics and wanted to learn how to create them, so she decided to study biomedical and biochemical engineering in college - she even got her Master's degree in the subject.
But something didn't feel right - she didn't have the passion for it she thought she had. So she looked elsewhere. After briefly considering banking, and teaching for a bit, she stumbled into the world of tech through one of London's many fintech meetups.
As she started to learn more and meet more people, she realized she'd found her new passion: coding. So she decided to teach herself to code...and the rest is history. Just kidding - but you'll have to listen to find out what comes next :)
In this episode of the podcast, you'll learn all about how Linh taught herself to code, how she persevered through a long job search and got her first (and second and third) dev job, what exciting projects she's working on at LEGO, and how she'd advise anyone wanting to break into tech to go about it.
Find Linh on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/pinglinh
On this week's episode of the freeCodeCamp podcast, Abbey chats with developer and wearer of many hats Princiya about how she changed careers, moved to Berlin, and worked her way up to a lead role.
Princiya grew up in India and studied computer science in school - like many of her family members and friends. She even taught some computer science and web development classes at the university level, but missed coding. So she decided to get back into it.
After working at a startup and starting to speak at conferences, Princiya took a trip to Berlin that changed her life. The community was welcoming, she made some great connections, and ended up applying to and getting a job there soon after.
Princiya now works at a startup in Berlin where she's also in charge of the recruitment process. She's a maintainer at Firefox Dev Tools, a Mozilla Tech Speaker, and an active and enthusiastic mentor. She attends many local meetups in her community and strongly believes in giving back to the groups that helped her get her start in her new city.
In this episode, Princiya shares how she worked her way up to a lead role, why she believes the hiring process needs to change - and how she wants to change it - and how she's building healthy and productive relationships within her team and organization. She also discusses why she loves being a mentor, how communities can help young developers, and why she believes in the therapeutic power of doing the dishes - among many other things.
When she's not helping her team work better together or working on her latest conference talk, she loves to cook and explore Berlin's food scene.
Connect with Princiya on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/princi_ya
On this week's episode of the freeCodeCamp podcast, Abbey chats with front-end developer Joe Previte who lives and works in Arizona. Joe shares the story of how he made the tough decision to leave grad school, how he discovered coding, and how he stays motivated and continues to learn.
CS50 is the most popular course at Harvard, and hundreds of thousands of people have taken the free online version of the course as well.
We recently posted the lectures for the course on freeCodeCamp's YouTube channel - including the CS50 game development course - all free and commercial-free.
During this interview, David Malan and Colton Ogden talk about how they got into technology. They share tips for how to effectively learn computer science, and some advice for teachers and community leaders as well.
Colton shares one of his favorite game development hacks, and David tell us the story behind the CS50 catchphrase: "this is CS50"
Follow CS50 on Twitter: https://twitter.com/cs50
Subscribe to the CS50 podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cs50-podcast/id1459708246
Test out CS50's Integrated Development Environment: https://ide.cs50.io/
And CS50's Sandbox: https://sandbox.cs50.io/
The article Colton mentions about Resident Evil 2 on N64 (PDF): https://twvideo01.ubm-us.net/o1/vault/GD_Mag_Archives/GDM_September_2000.pdf
The Steve Ballmer CS50 guest lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lhlKF6MECs
And Steve Ballmer's sales pitch of CS50 itself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El2mr5aS8y0
Fun fact: Brian Kernighan, whom David mentions as the CS50 teacher who preceded him, is also the co-creator of the C programming language. He's even has his own card in freeCodeCamp Programmer Playing Cards: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/introducing-programmer-playing-cards-d3eeeffe9a11/
In this week's episode of the freeCodeCamp podcast, Abbey chats with Greek developer and designer Eleftheria Batsou about her passion for creating content and how she balances work, school, travel, and personal time.
Eleftheria moved around a lot when she was young, but settled in Thessaloniki in northern Greece as a teenager. When she had to decide which track to take in school, she picked technology, science, and math. It turned out to be a good decision!
After bouncing around a bit and completing some internships, Eleftheria found a place that suited her. She learned to code by supplementing her education with free online resources (like freeCodeCamp!), leveled up her skills by completing numerous challenges like #100DaysofCode, and realized she had a passion for design as well as front-end development.
Today, she works as a developer, she's getting her Master's degree in design, she attends numerous conferences throughout Europe - and speaks at many of them - and she has a growing YouTube channel. She also has a blog where she shares all kinds of tips, tutorials, and bits of knowledge for beginning developers.
When she's not busy juggling her many tasks, she likes to workout to clear her head and hang out with her friends.
Find Eleftheria on Twitter: https://twitter.com/BatsouElef
Visit her website here: eleftheriabatsou.com
On this week's episode of the freeCodeCamp podcast, Abbey chats with self-taught developer Rick West who lives and works in the UK. Rick shares how he went from owning his own successful HVAC business to stumbling upon coding and slowly falling in love with tech.
Even though Rick's plumbing business was booming, he told himself that, by the time he was 30, he wanted to start another career. And he ended up doing just that. After meeting a couple developers through various contracts, he became fascinated with coding. When he had a break between jobs, he started teaching himself the basics.
Not long thereafter, Rick emailed some tech companies and found one that would take a chance on a very junior, very inexperienced developer - and the rest is history. He has just started a new job - as well as a Software Engineering degree - and he's a self-professed constant learner.
When he's not studying or coding, Rick enjoys hanging out with his family and leading a relatively quiet life. In this episode, you'll hear all about how Rick made the big career transition and why. We discuss how his life is different now, what it's like to be enrolled in a degree program while working full time, and how he prioritizes his time - among many other things.
Find Rick on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/rick_west8
In this week's episode of the freeCodeCamp podcast, Abbey chats with Madison Kanna, a full-stack developer who works remotely for Mediavine. Madison describes how homeschooling affected her future learning style, how she tackles imposter syndrome and failure, and how she helps others teach themselves to code.
In this week's episode, Abbey chats with artist and game dev Angela He who's a college student at Stanford University. Angela creates beautiful digital art and develops games that speak to emotional issues - and she's almost completely self-taught.
Angela grew up in a wealthy suburb of Washington, D.C., and started studying art at the tender age of 3 (after her parents found her drawing on the walls of their home). From there, she has worked with and learned about all different kinds of art, and has taught herself much of what she knows.
As she grew older, she got into game development and started figuring out what sort of games - and art - her peers and the general public might like. When she came to Stanford to start university, she continued to explore new tech and expand her skills.
Now, Angela is launching a clothing and accessories line inspired by her art while going to school and landing internships at companies like Microsoft and Niantic. She loves exploring the Bay Area with her friends, enjoys shopping for house plants, and eventually wants to write an anime, among many other things.
You can find Angela on twitter here: https://twitter.com/zephybite
You can check out her website here.
In this episode of the freeCodeCamp podcast, Abbey chats with developer advocate Alejandra Olvera-Novack about how she broke free from her restrictive cult upbringing, moved to the United States, and taught herself how to code.
Alejandra was raised without technology, without formal schooling, and in an extremely conservative environment. When she was in her late teens, she left her village and moved to Florida.
After a couple years of googling everything under the sun to catch up on the world's events, and trying to attend college, she ran out of money. Since she was alone - having cut all ties with her family - she took a leap of faith, moved to Seattle, WA, and started looking for work.
She worked odd jobs for a while, but quickly realized she'd need something more to survive and thrive. So she started to learn about HTML and CSS, something she never thought she could do. Fast-forward a couple years later, and she was working her way up to a job at Amazon Web Services.
Today, Alejandra works with robots, helps developers be as happy and productive as possible at AWS, and runs the non-profit she founded that teaches women, minorities, and disabled how to code for free. She manages her anxiety and PTSD with the help of a service dog and some really great mentors and friends, and she still can hardly believe she's living her dream.
Find Alejandra on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/QuetzalliAle
Visit her website here: https://alejandraquetzalli.com/
Check out SheCodesNow, Alejandra's non-profit here: https://twitter.com/shecodesnow
Find Abbey on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/abbeyrenn
Saron on Twitter: https://twitter.com/saronyitbarek
Quincy on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ossia
Get tickets to Codeland in NYC on July 22, 2019: http://codelandconf.com
Quincy's review of his Codeland experience: https://medium.freecodecamp.org/5f01cadf0a42
In this week's podcast, Quincy interviews Saron about her childhood, and her winding path into tech as an adult.
Saron moved from Ethiopia to the US as a child. Her parents had high standards for her academics, and they would even make up extra homework for her each night.
After studying liberal arts, Saron worked in science journalism. Eventually she decided to learn to code. After some self-study, she attended a coding bootcamp. From there, she got her start as a developer at ThoughtBot, and then worked at Microsoft.
Saron founded CodeNewbie in 2014 and started hosting Twitter chats for people who were interested in learning to code. Then she launched the CodeNewbie podcast, which now has more than 200 interviews with developers around the world.
Even though Saron is extremely productive, this productivity doesn't come easy. She talks about was recently diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder and General Anxiety Disorder, and she has adapted to her situation by being extremely methodical about how she invests her time and energy.
Enjoy the interview, and be sure to subscribe to both the CodeNewbie podcast and the freeCodeCamp podcast for new interviews each week.
In this episode of the freeCodeCamp podcast, Abbey chats with freelance Ruby on Rails developer Colleen Shnettler about how she switched from electrical engineering to development, how she founded her business, and how she makes time for kids and family - among many other things.
In this episode, Beau chats with Jesse Weigel, who live streams on the freeCodeCamp.org YouTube channel and is a Senior Software Engineer at DICK'S Sporting Goods. He talks about his career path, live streaming, getting a developer job, speaking at conferences, React Native, dealing with mental health issues, and more. Jesse's career has benefited a lot by live streaming. He talks about the benefits and offers suggestions for other people who want to get started with it. Jesse currently builds progressive web apps with React and GraphQL. He talks about why more people should be using React Native for their projects. He also talks about getting the confidence to speak at conferences and offers some tips that helped him deal with mental health issues. Links to topics Jesse discussed: Direct Neural Interface & DARPA: https://youtu.be/nvUHDK59Igw Brain Scan Clinic: https://www.amenclinics.com/ Find Jesse on Twitter: https://twitter.com/JesseRWeigel Also consider following Jesse's wife, Bekah, on Twitter: https://twitter.com/BekahHW Find Beau on Twitter: https://twitter.com/CarnesBeau
In this episode, Abbey chats with Kate Illsley, a tech recruiter and budding developer in Melbourne, Australia. Kate talks about how learning to code helps her be better at her job, and they also discuss Kate's journey into tech, how she got so involved in volunteering for various organizations in Melbourne, and what she loves about working with young women just starting out.
Kate's path from university to her current job was fairly straightforward, but once she discovered coding, she realized there was so much more she could be doing to help job seekers find their perfect fit.
She started volunteering with Startup Weekend in Melbourne, helped found Grad Girl, and got involved with VicITC for Women. Through her work with these non-profits, she discovered a passion for helping young people, especially young women, find careers in STEAM.
Kate attends and speaks at a variety of events, and loves discussing how to do well in interviews, how to get into tech, and how women can nurture their love of coding. When she's not running around the city and organizing events, she makes sure to spend plenty of time in her veggie patch with her rescue dog, Cookie, getting some quality time away from her computer.
Find Kate on Twitter: https://twitter.com/kate_illsley
Find Abbey on Twitter: https://twitter.com/abbeyrenn
Tim Myers is a developer from Denver. In the 1990s he finished high school and immediately enlisted in the US Army. When he got out, he started coding. He was working as a developer at an accounting firm when he got into a drunken brawl and ended up injuring somebody.
Tim was convicted of 2nd degree assault and got a 12 year prison sentence. He earned his college degree entirely while in prison, and was released after 8 years for good behavior.
He spent the next 3 years working various jobs like fast food while studying to get back into software development. And for the past 4 years, he's worked as software developer at several Denver companies.
In today's episode, Quincy interviews Tim about his journey from convicted felon to developer and family man.
Follow Tim on Twitter: https://twitter.com/denvercoder
Follow Quincy on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ossia
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In this episode, Abbey interviews social engineering expert Rachel Tobac and learns how she transitioned from teaching to infosec by way of one exhilarating competition.
Growing up, Rachel’s family didn’t have normal dinner table conversations. Her father was in medicine, so their chats revolved around strange diseases and scary edge cases. So when Rachel went to college, she aimed to follow in her father’s footsteps.
However, life had other plans, and she ended up becoming a teacher instead. But she wanted to do more than teach a small number of students – she wanted to help more people at scale. So she tried to figure out a way to do that.
After moving across the country to Silcon Valley and learning more about the world of tech, she stumbled upon her true calling (with a little nudge from her husband and now co-founder): social engineering. She took a trip to Defcon four years ago, won second place in a social engineering capture the flag hacking event, and she was hooked.
She dove in head first, learned all she could about infosec, social engineering, and security, and never looked back. Now, she and her husband run Social Proof Security, the boutique educational security firm they founded two years ago, and boast some of the largest tech companies in the Valley as clients. Rachel is also chair of the board of the non-profit WISP (Women in Security and Privacy), helps get scholarships for women to attend Defcon each year, and travels and speaks at all kinds of conferences and events herself.
When she isn’t educating companies about making their processes safer, she’s traveling the world, thinking up new ways to hack, or staring at her rescue dog.
In this episode, you’ll learn all about Rachel’s somewhat meandering path into security, how she discovered her passion for educating teams about social engineering, what it takes to get into the field, and why she loves her job.
Find Rachel on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RachelTobac
Check out Rachel's company: https://www.socialproofsecurity.com/
Learn more about DefCon: https://www.defcon.org/
Read up on WISP: https://www.wisporg.com/
Find Abbey on Twitter: https://twitter.com/abbeyrenn
On this week's episode of the freeCodeCamp podcast, Quincy interviews Shawn Wang (@swyx). We talk about "learning in public" and his transition into tech from finance, where he left behind a job that paid him US $350,000 per year.
Shawn grew up in Singapore and came to the US as a college student.
He worked in finance, but at age 30, he burned out. So he decided to learn to code. He used freeCodeCamp and a ton of other resources, and since then he's worked as a freelance developer, and at several companies including Netlify.
Follow Shawn on Twitter: https://twitter.com/swyx
Follow Quincy on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ossia
Here are some links we discuss in the interview.
Shawn's Projects:
The official React subreddit that Shawn moderates: https://reddit.com/r/reactjs
Shawn's article on No Zero Days: https://www.freecodecamp.org/forum/t/no-zero-days-my-roadmap-from-javascript-noob-to-full-stack-developer-in-12-months/164514
Job Search / Salary Negotation articles:
Cracking the Coding Interview: https://fcc.im/2UihbNm
Hasseeb Qureshi's story of getting a $250K/y developer job at Airbnb: https://haseebq.com/farewell-app-academy-hello-airbnb-part-i
Steve Yegge's "Get that job at Google" essay: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-google.html
Patrick McKenzie on Salary Negotiation https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/
Quincy's recommended article: I spent 3 months applying to jobs after a coding bootcamp. Here's what I learned: https://medium.freecodecamp.org/9a07468d2331
Algorithm Expert: https://www.algoexpert.io
Full Stack Academy https://www.fullstackacademy.com
Shawn's Learn In Public movement:
Shawn's Learn In Public essay https://gist.github.com/sw-yx/9720bd4a30606ca3ffb8d407113c0fe5
Kent C Dodds' Zero to 60 in Software Development: How to Jumpstart Your Career https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qPh6I2hfjw&app=desktop
Cory House on Becoming an Outlier: https://vimeo.com/97415346
Brad Frost on Creative Exhaust: http://bradfrost.com/blog/post/creative-exhaust/
Patrick McKenzie on the origin of the word "friendcatcher": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=511089
Chris Coyier on "Working In Public": https://chriscoyier.net/2012/09/23/working-in-public/
Links to other things we discuss:
Shawn's Software Engineering Daily Interview with Sacha Greif: https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2017/08/09/state-of-javascript-with-sacha-greif/
The origin of No Zero Days: https://www.reddit.com/r/getdisciplined/comments/1q96b5/i_just_dont_care_about_myself/cdah4af/
John Resig, creator of jQuery, telling his team to rip out jQuery: http://bikeshed.fm/180
Jeff Bezos' Two Pizza Team rule: https://buffer.com/resources/small-teams-why-startups-often-win-against-google-and-facebook-the-science-behind-why-smaller-teams-get-more-done
Shawn's "You can learn so much on the internet for the low, low price of your ego" quote draws from Paul Graham's Keep Your Identity Small: http://paulgraham.com/identity.html
Shawn's Impostor Syndrome Bootcamp Podcast: https://player.fm/series/impostor-syndrome
TypeScript's growth via npm surveys: https://mobile.twitter.com/seldo/status/1088240877107965953
In this week's episode, Abbey interviews Ariel Leslie, a software developer with an interesting background (she was once a knife salesperson, among other things!) who lives and works in Colorado.
While she can't discuss all the details of her super-secret job, she fills us in on how she got to where she is now. You'll hear about the benefits of her university degrees and how supportive communities have helped her along the way, why she loves tough problems and how she battles her insecurities, and why she takes time to learn new things, like how to play the Appalachian Mountain Dulcimer.
Ariel offers an interesting perspective on being a woman in tech, how various mentors have helped her become the developer she is today, and how she tackles imposter syndrome.
Find Ariel on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ArielLeslie
Find Abbey on Twitter: https://twitter.com/abbeyrenn
Guest: Adam Hollett, developer at Shopify: https://twitter.com/admhlt
Host: Quincy Larson, the teacher who founded freeCodeCamp: https://twitter.com/ossia
On today's episode of the freeCodeCamp podcast, Quincy interviews Adam Hollett. He's a software developer at Shopify in Ottawa, Canada.
Adam started building basic websites and forums when he was in high school, but he never saw coding as something he could do professionally. He got a degree in English Literature, worked in food prep, and taught at a community college. He later worked as a technical writer, and set his eyes on working at Shopify, a major Canadian tech company based in Ottawa. Adam was able to gradually to learn new tools on the job that helped him transition into a role as developer.
We talk about Adam's journey - from meandering college student to software developer - and the many lessons he learned along the way.
On today's episode of the freeCodeCamp.org podcast, Abbey chats with Jennifer Bland, a Google Developer Expert, software engineer, prolific speaker, entrepreneur, and world traveler. You'll learn how Jennifer got into tech (twice!), what she's working on now, and how she helps many different communities of developers learn and grow.
Find Jennifer on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ratracegrad
Check out Jennifer's podcast: https://www.codeprep.io/podcast/
A bit more about Jennifer:
Jennifer Bland is a senior software engineer out of Atlanta, Georgia. Jennifer has a fascinating background - she started in tech at an early age after studying computer science in school, but then left the field, worked elsewhere, and retired at the age of 51.
Once she had some time to explore other interests, she rediscovered programming - through a JavaScript book on the clearance table at a local bookstore.
A number of years later, she's now working on some very exciting tech at Stanley, Black and Decker, she's an extremely active volunteer in her local tech community, she's on the leadership team for Women who Code Atlanta chapter, she speaks at numerous conferences, and she's recently become a Google Developer expert!
So in this episode, you'll hear about how she got to where she is, what she's passionate about, and her advice for getting into tech, conquering those pesky whiteboard interviews, how to network if you're an introvert (like she is) and much more...
On this episode of the freeCodeCamp.org podcast, Abbey chats with Lauren Mayers, a web developer working in Ottowa, Canada. Lauren hasn't always lived in North America, however - she's from Australia - and hasn't always been in tech.
We'll hear about how she transitioned from being a registered nurse into the world of coding, how she moved halfway around the world, why she loves the open source community, and what she's learned along the way...among many other things.
Connect with Lauren on Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenalexm
Connect with Abbey on Twitter: https://twitter.com/abbeyrenn
On today's episode of the freeCodeCamp podcast, Abbey chats with Tracy Lee, a prolific speaker, founder, JavaScript advocate, and open-source enthusiast.
Tracy is a Google Developer Expert and the founder of This Dot. She organizes numerous meetups, runs the Modern Web podcast, and is on the RxJS core team.
Tracy will share with us how she got into tech, what she's passionate about, and how you can become a badass person in tech, too.
Connect with Tracy on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ladyleet
Connect with Abbey on Twitter: https://twitter.com/abbeyrenn
Find Tracy on the web: https://www.thisdot.co/
Learn to code for free: https://www.freecodecamp.org/
Zubin Pratap is a corporate lawyer who taught himself to code using freeCodeCamp.org and other learning resources.
Zubin develops software in Melbourne, Australia. He's a lover of hackathons and competed in freeCodeCamp's first hackathon at GitHub headquarters last November.
Follow Zubin on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ZubinPratap
Follow Quincy on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ossia
The following is a note from Zubin himself about a course he just launched. Note that freeCodeCamp.org does not receive any benefit from this, and has not reviewed his course - we just want to help him publicize it.
---
Zubin was a non-technical person for a long time, and set a goal to become his own tech cofounder. But he quit from discouragement twice. It was much harder than it should've been, and Zubin put together a course on all the things he wish he'd known and all the techniques that made him not quit the third time. In 3 hours you can learn the roadmap that could save you months, thousands of dollars, and a lot of stress.
For podcast listeners, Zubin has a special promotion. The first 20 people to buy the course on Udemy before the end of March can get it for free using the Promo Code: FCC_FREE_PROMO Course link: https://www.udemy.com/how-not-to-quit-coding/ If you're not among the first 20, the next 50 can get it before April 30 at the discounted rate of US$10, using the Promo Code: FCC_PROMO_50 If you're a later listener, get in touch at the webform on https://matchfitmastery.weebly.com, and mention FCC in the message to get a discount code.Abbey and Quincy talk about the freeCodeCamp podcast itself, and the new weekly episodes starting on Monday.
Abbey on Twitter: https://twitter.com/abbeyrenn
Quincy on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ossia
Links mentioned:
The article Quincy mentioned: "The best podcasts for new coders, and the best tools for listening to them": https://fcc.im/2T2lMHT
Tools:
Listen Notes: https://listennotes.com
Audacity: https://www.audacityteam.org
Zencastr: http://zencastr.com
Libsyn: https://libsyn.com
Abbey Rennemeyer interviews Erica Peterson, the founder of Moms Can: Code and Science Tots, and Founder Gym alumna.
Erica started her career in biology, but after being told that she should leave her graduate program once she became pregnant with her first child, she started to look for other options.
Three years ago, inspired by her desire to understand how her children were learning, she founded Science Tots, a non-profit that helps introduce children to the world of STEM.
And just over a year ago, Erica founded Moms Can: Code, an organization that helps mothers learn to code so they can both support their children's learning and open new doors for themselves.
In 2018, Erica has been a South By Southwest accelerator pitch finalist, Project Entrepreneur finalist, and Startup of the Year semifinalist - so it's been a busy year for her!
Erica is extremely active in her local community, and spends a great deal of her time helping people learn. Today, she'll tell us all about how she got into the tech world, how and why she became a founder, and why being a mom who codes is so awesome.
Interview by Abbey Rennemeyer: https://twitter.com/abbeyrenn
Erica Peterson on Twitter: https://twitter.com/foundermama
Moms Can: Code website: https://www.momscancode.com/
Learn to code for free at: https://www.freecodecamp.orgIntro music by Vangough: https://fcc.im/2APOG02
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