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The freeCodeCamp Podcast

ByfreeCodeCamp.org
100 episodes

Podcast Summary

freeCodeCamp.org is a community of millions of people who learn to code together. Thousands of us have gotten developer jobs after freeCodeCamp. On our community's weekly podcast, we share stories of people who have learned to code and built exciting projects. We also share lots of advice on getting a developer job and building projects of your own.

#1

#174 How to Survive in Tech When Everything's Changing w/ 21-year Veteran Dev Joe Attardi

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Joe Attardi. He's a software engineer and prolific author of programming books. We talk about: How software development has changed over the past 21 years Tips for suriving AI's sweeping changes to the field The evolving role of Computer Science degrees Why people should still read O'Reilly style programming books on dead trees Links we talk about during our conversation: Joe's freeCodeCamp books and tutorials: Joe's website: Joe's Web API Cookbook: Joe's open source projects on GitHub: What Joe's desk looks like: Some games Joe's recently played:

2025-05-30•1hr 10mins
#2

#173 Laid off but not afraid with X-senior Microsoft Dev MacKevin Fey

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews MacKevin Fey. He just got laid off last week from his senior engineering role at Microsoft. We talk about: How Mack's approaching the job search after being laid off Tips for building your own financial safety net while working as an engineer How to use your dev skills to help people around you in the meantime And how Mack trains mentally and physically for the rigors of modern work Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at Support also comes from the 11,423 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. You can join these chill human beings and help our charity's mission by going to donate.freecodecamp.org Links we talk about during our conversation: Mack's Oscilliscope course:

2025-05-23•1hr 18mins
#3

#172 How to make Developer Friends When You Don't Live in Silicon Valley, with Iraqi Engineer Code;Life

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews software engineer and live coding streamer Code;Life. For those of you watching the video version of this interview, she lives in Iraq and she uses a 3D avatar to protect her identity. We talk about: Training language models to work well with low-resource languages from Africa and the Middle East Growing up in Iraq and her early experiences with computers and the internet How streaming yourself coding can be a good way to practice your skills, update your knowledge, and motivate fellow devs How to participate in coding competitions and hackathons even if you feel intimidated Support for freeCodeCamp comes from the 11,384 kind folks who support our charity through a monthly donation. You can join these chill human beings and aid us in our mission by going to donate.freecodecamp.org Support for also comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at Correction: Quincy mentioned half of all articles on Wikipedia are English. While this is no longer true, as of 2025 half of all Wikipedia pageviews are still for English articles. Links we talk about: Quincy's interview with Eammon Cottrell who automated his coffee shop chain: MNIST character dataset: Zepeto tool for creating your own V-tuber avatar: Hugging Face AI Agent course (freeCodeCamp also has several courses on this on YouTube but this is the one CL mentioned): A video of Code;Life doing a Kaggle data science competition:

2025-05-16•1hr 29mins
#4

#171 Ditching a Microsoft Job to Enter Startup Purgatory with Lonewolf Engineer Sam Crombie

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Sam Crombie. He's a software engineer and prolific open source contributor to freeCodeCamp. He abandon his job at Microsoft, got into Y Combinator, and is currently in startup pivot hell trying to decide how to use the half million he raised. We talk about: How useful are AI coding tools, really? Tips for getting new users to care about your projects What's its really like running a Y-Combinator-funded tech startup Tips for getting into an Ivy League computer science degree program Support for freeCodeCamp comes from the 11,384 kind folks who support our charity through a monthly donation. You can join these chill human beings and aid us in our mission by going to donate.freecodecamp.org Support for also comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at Links we talk about during our conversation: Sam's course on how to audit university courses: College Compendium, a univeristy course auditing tool Sam built with fellow freeCodeCamp podcast alum Seth Goldin:

2025-05-09•1hr 55mins
#5

#170 From Art School Drop-out to Microsoft Engineer with Shashi Lo

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Shashi Lo. He's a software engineer at Microsoft. He grew up the child of refugees. He wanted to start earning money and build his family so he abandoned his art school degree and taught himself how to program. He immediately hustled to land freelance development clients – something he still does today on top of his full time job and raising his 4 kids. We talk about: - Making ends meet doing freelance work - How to bootstrap your reputation toward getting a job in big tech - Mistakes he sees careers changers make - The pros and cons of working in big tech VS working at developer agencies Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at Support also comes from the 11,384 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. You can join these chill human beings and help our charity's mission by going to donate.freecodecamp.org Links we talk about during our conversation: - Shashi's conference talks and other podcast interviews:

2025-05-02•1hr 23mins
#6

#169 From fast food worker to cybersecurity engineer with Tae'lur Alexis

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Tae'lur Alexis. She's a developer and security analyst. Instead of going to college, Tae'lur spent years working various fast food and retail jobs. Tae'lur taught herself Python and JavaScript using freeCodeCamp and worked as a software engineer for 5 years before specializing in security engineering. Now instead of building applications, she breaks them. We talk about: - Making ends meet working McDonalds in Florida - How she taught herself programming using freeCodeCamp and the challenge - Leveraging local meetups to make developer friends - Moving to Thailand and working remotely Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at Support also comes from the 11,384 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. You can join these chill human beings and help our charity's mission by going to donate.freecodecamp.org Links we talk about during our conversation: - Tae'lur's website and blog articles: - Tae'lur's YouTube channel about working remotely in Bangkok: - Tae'lur on Twitter:

2025-04-21•1hr 20mins
#7

#168 From Accountant to Data Engineer with Alyson La

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Alyson La. She taught herself how to code while working as an accountant at GitHub and was able to transition to a data scientist there, then ultimately a software engineer. After one of her kids got diagnosed with autism, she left her career for 3 years to be a full-time mom. She then re-entered the workforce and now teaches other moms how to do the same through a charity called Tech-Moms. She recently won a teacher of the year award and was a top 5 finalist in a data visualization competition. We talk about: - How Alyson taught herself programming while working as an accountant - How she transitioned to data analyst and ultimately data engineer - Tips for preparing for a break from work to take care of your family or address burnout - How to re-enter with the workforce with gusto Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at Support also comes from the 11,384 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. You can join these chill human beings and help our charity's mission by going to donate.freecodecamp.org Links we talk about during our conversation: - Alyson's new analytics consultancy: - The charity Alyson teaches at: - Tech-Mom's Data class: - The petition site Alyson mentioned: - Alyson's Drake fan page: - Alyson's matching game: - Alyson substack: - The data visualization app Alyson that was a finalist in the recent competition:

2025-04-12•1hr 19mins
#8

#167 From drop-out to software architect with Jason Lengstorf

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Jason Lengstorf. He learned to code out of necessity building websites for local emo bands. He dropped out of college but eventually worked as an engineer at IBM and has gone on to roles at many other companies doing everything from software architecture to management. He runs CodeTV, a Bravo-style reality TV channel for developers. We talk about: - Jason's winding path into development from building websites for bands - Teaching yourself programming by chasing your curiosity - How in-person events gives you tacit knowledge that makes you a better engineer - How having a broad range of skills ultimately helps you build better projects Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at Support also comes from the 11,384 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. You can join these chill human beings and help our charity's mission by going to donate.freecodecamp.org Links we talk about during our conversation: - CodeTV: - The CodeTV YouTube channel: - Jason's website:

2025-04-04•1hr 20mins

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#9

#166 From broke musician to working dev. How college drop-out Ryan Furrer taught himself to program

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Ryan Furrer. He's a Front End Engineer working on tools that help companies monitor their buildings for energy usage, water leaks, and other environmental factors. Ryan dropped out of college and worked as a musician and violin instructor. He spent 5 years teaching himself how to program before getting freelance gigs, and ultimately landing developer jobs. We talk about: - Life as a broke musician - Teaching yourself to code while working full-time - How Ryan had to move back in with his parents after a divorce - His 5-year journey to his first developer job Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at Also, I want to thank the 11,384 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: 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: Ryan's podcast, Web Dev Dialogues: Ryan's website: A freeCodeCamp course on the Astro front end development framework taught by freeCodeCamp podcast guest James Q Quick:

2025-03-28•1hr 36mins
#10

#165 From hating coding to programming satellites at age 37 with Francesco Ciulla

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Francesco Ciulla. He's a software engineer who has worked with the European Space Agency on code that powers the Copernicus satellite program. More recently he's published courses on learning Docker and the Rust programming language. We talk about: - How Francesco worked as a volleyball coach until we was 32, before getting serious about coding - Francesco's work on coding satellites - How he's given dozens of talks about emerging tools at major tech conferences - How he creates tech tutorials even though he's a proud introvert who has to put himself out there Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at Support also comes from the 11,384 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. You can join these chill human beings and help our mission by going to Links we talk about during our conversation: - Francesco's YouTube channel: - Francesco's upcoming book on Rust: - Francesco's personal website and all his links:

2025-03-21•1hr 27mins
#11

#164 How to become a self-taught developer while supporting a family

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Jesse Hall. He's software engineer and a developer advocate at MongoDB. He taught himself to code while raising kids and working on the Best Buy Geek Squad fixing computers. Jesse has created tons of tutorials over the years on YouTube and on freeCodeCamp. We talk about his coding journey, how the field has changed over the few years, and how hype has distorted peoples' perception of getting into code. We talk about: - Growing up in a one stop light town - Teaching himself to code for free using freeCodeCamp - How he created YouTube tutorials to inspire his kids, then got quite good at it - How Jesse's early interest in Web3 lead him to needing to "dig himself out of the grave" of being "the NFT tutorial guy" Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at Support also comes from the 11,384 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. Join these kind folks and help our mission by going to 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: - Jesse's tutorials on freeCodeCamp: - Jesse's course on how to set up and configure the VS Code editor:

2025-03-14•1hr 22mins
#12

#163 Learn fewer skills but go deeper - the Caleb Curry interview

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Caleb Curry. He's a software engineer and prolific computer science educator. He recently started mentoring dozens of developers directly and helping them with their skills and careers. We'll talk about his experience getting laid off as a dev and how we prepared for his mid-career job search. We talk about: - How Caleb got laid off and went about landing his next developer job - How most people sleep on networking and recruiters, but shouldn't - Why Caleb is so serious about teaching system design concepts - How Caleb pairs his deep focus with broad extracurricular learning through podcasts and white papers Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at Support also comes from the 11,343 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. Join these kind folks and help our mission by going to Links we talk about during our conversation: - Caleb's course on Database Design: - Caleb's system design lecture playlist: - Caleb on LinkedIn:

2025-03-07•1hr 30mins
#13

#162 How to become a developer in your 30s with Anjana Vakil

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Anjana Vakil. She left academia to learn to code and got her first developer job in her 30s. Anjana was an English teacher who studied computational linguistics, and found building software to be more fun than actual research. She's worked at ton of tech companies and has freelance clients. She shares some excellent tips on learning new skills and avoiding burnout. We talk about: How Anjana taught herself to code in her 30s Being an American dev working in Europe Stress, burnout, and how she gets by How skills from your previous non-developer career can help differentiate you as a developer Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at Support also comes from the 11,243 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. Join these kind folks and help our mission by going to Links we talk about during our conversation: "How to be the ideal newb" article: "Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle" book that Anjana mentions: Anjana's website:

2025-02-28•2hr 51mins
#14

#161 How to go full-on Renaissance Man mode in 2025 with Vaughn Gene

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Vaughn Gene. He's a self-taught software engineer who works with lots of freelance clients. Vaughn lived in Japan for 10 years, and speaks Japanese, speaks Spanish, plays guitar, plays piano, and is skilled at MMA. He's obsessed with learning new skills. We talk about: - How Vaughn struggled with high school and joined the Navy - How he learned Japanese so he could work as a personal trainer in Japan - How he learned coding using freeCodeCamp as a way to make more time and more money - His pragmatic approach for teaching himself new skills for free Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at Support also comes from the 11,043 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. Join these kind folks and help our mission by going to Links we talk about during our conversation: - Vaughn's YouTube channel and his approach to pursuing multiple skills in tandem: - Vaughn on Instagram where he posts guitar:

2025-02-21•2hr 11mins
#15

#160 She taught herself coding in her 30s for zero dollars

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Julia Undeutsch who is a self-taught software engineer and accessibility specialist. She works at a big European company making software more accessible for people with disabilities. She taught herself to code in her 30s using freeCodeCamp. Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at Support also comes from the 11,043 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. Join these kind folks and help our mission by going to We talk about: - Julia's coding journey from poker dealer to self-taught software engineer - How she creates tutorials in Japanese - Her passion for making software easier to use for everyone - Working remotely at a big European software consultancy Links we talk about during our conversation: - Julia's website: - Movie trailer for the 1999 Clive Owen movie "Croupier" that Quincy mentions:

2025-02-15•1hr 8mins
#16

#159 From freeCodeCamp to CTO with Robotics Engineer Peggy Wang

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Peggy Wang. She used freeCodeCamp to learn coding. She then worked in Big Tech as a robotics engineer. And now she's cofounder and CTO of Ego AI, a Y-Combinator-backed startup that builds human-like agents for video games. We talk about: - How she grew up a first generation American and public school kid in Milwaukee - How her love of robotics helped her get into Stanford - How freeCodeCamp served as a key resource to build her developer chops - The near future of humanoid robots, self-driving cars, and human-like AI agents in games Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at Support also comes from the 11,224 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. Join these kind folks and help our mission by going to Links we talk about during our conversation: - Peggy's GameDev company, Ego AI: - Quincy's interview with hardware engineer Bruno Haid that he mentions toward the end of this episode:

2025-02-07•2hr 2mins
#17

#158 From Gas Station to Google with Self-Taught Cloud Engineer Rishab Kumar

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Rishab Kumar, cloud engineer and developer advocate at Twillio. Rishab grew up in India and moved to Canada for school. But he couldn't afford to finish. He resorted to delivering pizzas and working at a gas station. But he worked hard to teach himself how to code and how to build cloud infrastructure, and eventually got a job Google. Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at Support also comes from the 11,043 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. Join these kind folks and help our mission by going to We talk about: - How to teach yourself cloud engineering - Getting repeatedly rejected from FAANG jobs but persisting - Filling up the Infinity Gauntlet with cloud certifications - How DevOps and Cloud Engineering are changing Links we talk about during our conversation: - Rishab's Terraform course on freeCodeCamp: - Rishab's LangChain LLM deployment course on freeCodeCamp: - Learn to Cloud guide by Rishab and his friend at Microsoft, Gwyn: - Rishab's YouTube channel

2025-01-31•1hr 25mins
#18

#157 Getting a developer job in 2025 with Lane Wagner

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Lane Wagner. He's a software engineer, prolific contributor to freeCodeCamp, and founder of the Boot.dev online learning platform. Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at Support also comes from the 11,043 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. Join these kind folks and help our mission by going to We talk about: - Lane's thoughts on college and computer science degrees - Back end development and why it resonnates with him - Why he's so enthusiastic about the Go Programming Language - What Lane's learned about how people learn Quincy mentions the number of engineers graduating every year from Indian and Chinese universities (including computer science majors, which is usually the most popular engineering degree). It's hard to find exact numbers but... - India: more than 1 million engineering graduates / year - China: more than 1 million engineering graduates / year - US: only about 200,000 engineering graduates / year Links we talk about during our conversation: - Lane's 4-hour course on how to get a job as a developer: - Lane's 5-hour HTTP Networking course: - Lane's SQL for Web Developers course: - Lane's freely available books published through freeCodeCamp Press: - Khan Academy founder's talk on mastery learning: - The Zone of Proxmial Development education concept:

2025-01-25•2hr 26mins
#19

#156 AI Reality VS Speculation with Google Machine Learning Engineer Jiquan Ngiam

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Jiquan Ngiam. He's a former Google Brain engineer who's building tools to make AI useful for everyone – not just developers. We talk about the power of AI and it's practical capabilities, and separate those from a lot of the hype surrounding the AI space. Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at wixstudio.com. Support also comes from the 11,113 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. Join these kind folks and help our mission by going to We talk about: - How AI agents work - Where AI is going and its limitations - How non-developers can leverage AI - And how developers can REALLY leverage AI Can you guess what song I'm playing in the intro? Links we talk about during our conversation: - Jiquan's company, Lutra AI: - Jiquan's article on generative agentic interfaces for working with large spreadsheets: - Jiquan's article on OODA loops for AI Agents: - A paper Jiquan mentions, Executable Code Actions Elicit Better LLM Agents:

2025-01-17•1hr 53mins
#20

#155 CUDA and GPU Programming with Elliot Arledge

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Elliot Arledge. He's a 20-year old computer science student who's created several popular freeCodeCamp courses on LLMs, the Mojo programming language, and GPU programming with CUDA. He joins us from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. We talk about: - Building AI systems from scratch - How Elliot has learned so much so quickly and his methods - How he approaches reading academic papers - His CS degree coursework VS his self-directed learning In the intro I play the 1988 Double Dragon II game soundtrack song "Into the Turf" Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at Support also comes from the 11,043 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. Join these kind folks and help our mission by going to Links we talk about during our conversation: - Elliot's Mojo course on freeCodeCamp: - Elliot's Cuda GPU programming course on freeCodeCamp: - Elliot's Python course on building an LLM from scratch: - Elliot's YouTube channel: - Elliot's many projects on GitHub:

2025-01-10•1hr 19mins
#21

#154 Why developers needn't fear CSS – with the King of CSS himself Kevin Powell

Take our year-end freeCodeCamp podcast listener survey real quick: On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Kevin Powell. He's a designer, a software engineer, and an expert in CSS. He's runs a CSS-focused YouTube channel with nearly a million subscribers. There's nothing sensational there – he literally just teaches people CSS. Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at Support also comes from the 11,043 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. Join these kind folks and help our mission by going to CORRECTION: I (Quincy) say during the interview that the Uber found a way to access microphones on iOS without users' knowledge. There have been documented cases of malware doing this (like Pegasus) but Uber didn't do this. They did do a lot of other shady things, like continue collecting data even after you deleted their app – but mic spying was not one of them. Yes, early Uber was an ethical tire fire. But it's important to get facts right here. We talk about: - Why you should still learn CSS in 2025 - How teaching concepts improves your own understanding of them - How learning to skateboard helped Kevin escape Tutorial Hell - Massive improvements coming to CSS Links we talk about during our conversation: - Kevin's YouTube channel: - Original Space Jam website Kevin mentions: - The article that coined the term Responsive Design: - Kevin's freeCodeCamp article on how learning skateboarding helped him out of tutorial hell: - Kevin's freeCodeCamp course on building and deploying a portfolio page: - Playable Minesweeper in CSS that Quincy mentions: - Acknowledged mistakes that are permanently coded into CSS: - Talk on why is CSS so weird:

2024-12-20•2hr 4mins
#22

#153 How to get a Developer Job – even in this economy – with James Q Quick

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews James Q Quick. He's a developer, speaker, and teacher. James grew up in Memphis. He was an athlete who played violin, and knew nothing about computer science but chose it as his college major. Since then, he's not only worked as a dev at Microsoft, FedEx and many tech startups. And he's given more than 100 talks at conferences about technical topics. Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at Support also comes from the 11,043 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. Join these kind folks and help our mission by going to We talk about: - How coding a Harry Potter Trivia app launched James' developer career - Getting laid off then getting back onto the bike - How to go about getting a first developer job - How to make a name for yourself through conference talks and creating tutorials Links we talk about during our conversation: James's website: Jevon's Paradox:

2024-12-13•1hr 36mins
#23

#152 How a breakdancing injury launched a coding empire with Scott Tolinski

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Scott Tolinski. He's a developer who 14 years ago - after injuring himself breakdancing – decided to create a programming tutorial YouTube channel called LevelUpTuts. He is also co-host of Syntax, the most popular web dev podcast on the planet. Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at wixstudio.com. Support also comes from the 11,113 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. Join these kind folks and help our mission by going to donate.freecodecamp.org We talk about: - Scott's perspective on the state of web dev - His journey from video editing into full blown software development for agencies - What he's learned from recording 2,000 tutorials and 800 web dev podcasts - Productivity tips and how he's kept up this pace for 12 years without burning out Can you guess what song I'm playing in the intro? Also, I want to thank the 11,036 kind people who support our charity each month, and who make this podcast possible. You can join them and support our mission at: Links we talk about during our conversation: - The Syntax podcast: - Scott's archive of more than 1,000 programming tutorials he taught on YouTube: - The Honeypot documentary about Scott (8 minute watch):

2024-12-06•1hr 41mins

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#24

#151 Automating a coffee shop chain using self-taught coding skills with Eamonn Cottrell

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Eamonn Cottrell. He's a software engineer who also runs a local chain of coffee shops in Knoxville. Eamonn taught himself to code using freeCodeCamp. And he's since published 37 freeCodeCamp tutorials on productivity and automation using spreadsheets. Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at Support also comes from the 11,113 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. Join these kind folks and get involved in our mission by going to We talk about: - Eamonn's love of coffee and how he bought VHS tapes to learn latte art - How he finds time to expand his skills in between running coffee shops and ultra-marathoning - How he used spreadsheets to automate the logistics of running coffee shops - How he balances being a musician and writer with the practical realities of providing for a family of 6 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: CORRECTION: Vincent van Gogh was supported by his younger brother – not his brother in-law. van Gogh never married so he never had a brother in law. I'm not sure why I thought that. Also, he seems to have sold more than one painting in his life (as many of us were taught in school), but nowhere near enough paintings to support himself as an artist. Links we talk about during our conversation: Eamonn's freeCodeCamp articles: Eamonn's YouTube channel: Excel-based esports: Ultra Marathons: Got Sheet: Progress and Perfection: Eamonn on LinkedIn: Eamonn on Twitter:

2024-11-22•1hr 49mins
#25

#150 To code is to struggle! I interview Tech with Tim, who got a job at Microsoft at age 19

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: Links we talk about during our conversation: - The classroom montage from Real Genius that Quincy mentions: - One of Tim's mock coding interview videos: - Tim's course:

2024-11-15•1hr 40mins
#26

#149 The State of AI with Stanford Researcher Yifan Mai

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: Links we talk about during our conversation: - Yifan's personal webpage: yifanmai.com - HELM Leaderboards: - HELM GitHub Repository: - Stanford HAI Blog:

2024-11-08•1hr 58mins
#27

#148 Open Source is WILD. The craziest things The Changelog has seen in 15 years.

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: Links we talk about during our conversation: - Honeypot episode Adam mentions: - Steve Yegge episodes Quincy mentions: - Open Source Civilization episode Jerod mentions:

2024-11-01•1hr 40mins
#28

#147 From Stealing Cars to Self-Taught Software Engineer with Dorian Develops

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: Links we talk about during our conversation: - Vagabonding book by Rolf Potts: - 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]: - A recent HTML tutorial by Dorian: - Dorian's video about his journey to sobriety: - Dorian's video about his love of Brazillian Jujitsu but how it's left him with permanent injuries:

2024-10-25•2hr 52mins
#29

#146 From Failing Programming Class to Senior Software Engineer with Tadas Petra

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: 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): Tadas's video about how to control the lights in your house with Flutter: Tadas's course platform for learning cross platform app development with Flutter:

2024-10-18•1hr 30mins
#30

#145 Open Source Superstar and Roadmap.sh Founder Kamran Ahmed

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: Links we talk about during our conversation: - Kamran's website, Roadmap.sh: - Kamran's "Design Patterns for Humans" GitHub book: - freeCodeCamp's "How to Contribute to Open Source guide" Quincy mentions: - Kamran on Twitter:

2024-10-11•1hr 50mins
#31

#144 How to Become a Street Smart Developer – From Dropout to Selling his Company w/ Dennis Ivy

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: Links we talk about during our conversation: - The Bussard Ramjet theoretical spacecraft Quincy mentions as an analogy: - Dennis Ivy's React + Appwrite course on freeCodeCamp: - Dennis Ivy's YouTube channel: - Dennis Ivy on Twitter:

2024-10-04•1hr 48mins
#32

#143 The reality of the developer job market with ex-Googler YK Sugi

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: 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: - YK's freeCodeCamp article about leaving his job at Google to focus on entrepreneurship: - YK's popular CS Dojo YouTube channel: - YK on Twitter:

2024-09-27•1hr 31mins
#33

#142 From PhD drop-out to Google Data Scientist with Megan Risdal

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: Links we talk about during our conversation: Meg's blog: The Sliced Data Science Gameshow that Meg co-hosted with Nick Wan: Meg on Twitter: Kaggle's open learning resources: The Gemma team at Google that Meg also works on:

2024-09-20•1hr 49mins
#34

#141 Lessons from freelancing for dozens of startups with Eddie Jaoude

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: Links we talk about during our conversation: Eddie's YouTube channel with more than 700 tutorials: Eddie on Twitter: Eddie on LinkedIn:

2024-09-13•2hr 4mins
#35

#140 Surviving 40 years in the software industry with Jack Herrington the Blue Collar Coder

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: Links we talk about during our conversation: Blue Collar Coder YouTube channel: Jack on Twitter: 1984 ad from Apple: Edward Tufte, the academic Jack mentions: Ben Affleck's funny drunk DVD commentary on Armageddon movie (this contains profanity so don't listen to with young kids around):

2024-09-06•2hr 4mins
#36

#139 Spotify Developer Emma Bostian Talks Coding, Hiring Devs, and European Work Culture

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: Links we talk about during our conversation: - Emma on Twitter: - The Ladybug Podcast about women in tech that Emma helped host for several years:

2024-08-30•1hr 44mins
#37

#138 From Brain Tumor to Teaching 500,000 Sysadmin Students with Hiroko Nishimura

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: Links we talk about during our conversation: - Hiroko’s article about her brain surgery: - Hiroko's book AWS for non-engineers: - Hiroko's AWS course: - And her AWS linktree: - My history of the 100DaysOfCode challenge:

2024-08-23•1hr 59mins
#38

#137 Rahul Pandey quit his $800,000/year FAANG developer job to build a startup

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: Links we talk about during our conversation: - Rahul's Android app tutorial on freeCodeCamp (4 hour watch): - Rahul's video about post-college job offers: - Taro, Rahul's company: - The story of a software engineer who moves back to India to run his father's chemical business after his death: - Conference talk about the correlation between interest rates and developer hiring, by Pragmatic Engineer: - Rahul on LinkedIn:

2024-08-16•1hr 28mins
#39

#136 Developer and inventor with 27 software patents – Angie Jones Interview

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: Links we talk about during our conversation: - Test Automation University learning paths: - Angie on Twitter:

2024-08-09•1hr 30mins
#40

#135 Where Data Science meets Sports Analytics with Golfer Turned Engineer Ken Jee

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: Links we talk about during our conversation: Ken's Nearest Neighbors Podcast: The Exponential Athelete Podcast, also hosted by Ken: The Founders podcast, which both Ken and Quincy listen to. James Dyson episode: Anna Wintour episode: San Antonio caves that Quincy visited:

2024-08-02•2hr 6mins
#41

#134 How to get a FAANG Dev Job in your 40s with Coding Interview University creator John Washam

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: Links we talk about during our conversation: - Coding Interview University: - The Starup Next Door, John's blog: - Follow John on LinkedIn: - The Talent Code, the book John recommends:

2024-07-26•3hr 1mins
#42

#133 How to get Machine Learning Skills without doing a PhD in Math [Podcast #133 with Daniel Bourke]

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: Links we talk about during our conversation: Daniel's 26-hour PyTorch course on freeCodeCamp: Nutrify, Daniel's "pokedex for food". Uses computer vision to map photos of food to nutrition data: Daniel's Charles Bukowski-inspired novel "Charlie Walks": The research website Daniel mentions: Daniel on Twitter:

2024-07-19•2hr 10mins
#43

#132 From doing data entry to becoming a developer with Jessica Chan AKA Coder Coder

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: Links we talk about during our conversation: Jessica's 7-hour "How to Build a Website" freeCodeCamp course: Jessica's coding journey animated video: Kevin Powell, the "King of CSS", who has also shared courses on freeCodeCamp: Jessica on Twitter:

2024-07-12•1hr 39mins
#44

#131 What Scott Hanselman learned from 900 podcast interviews with devs

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: Links we talk about during our conversation: - Scott's Hanselminutes Podcast: - A personal tour of Lotus Notes founder Ray Ozzie's computer artifacts: - Scott on Twitter:

2024-07-05•1hr 21mins
#45

#130 From Fashion to Software Engineer with Alison Yoon

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: 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: - Alison on Twitter: - Devil Wears Prada trailer:

2024-06-28•1hr 26mins
#46

#129 Why are senior developers learning low-code and AI tools? [Adrian Twarog Interview]

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: Links we talk about during our conversation: - Adrian's popular video "Real life RPG to track your life": - Adrian's UX course on freeCodeCamp: - Merge, Adrian's Discord community for devs: - Adrian's design book, Enhance UI:

2024-06-21•1hr 42mins
#47

#128 From Designing Truck Wraps to Coding SDKs and APIs with Colby Fayock

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: Links we talk about during our conversation: Colby's freeCodeCamp course on building a clone of Google Photos using AI tools and Next.js: Colby's Trailer and web design work: Colby's ThinkGeek Modeling. He's legit a male model: Colby's music from his band years: The XKCD comic I mention about how the scope of developer work can be non-intuitive:

2024-06-13•1hr 38mins
#48

#127 How to Outsmart AI as a Developer with Dr. Chuck

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: Links we talk about during our conversation: - Dr. Chuck's latest freeCodeCamp course on C programming: - Dr. Chuck's Python for Everyone freeCodeCamp Course: - Kylie Ying's popular Machine Learning for Everyone course inspired by Dr. Chuck: - Dr. Chuck's website with his free interactive coursework:

2024-06-06•1hr 21mins
#49

#126 How Suz Hinton went from Dev to White Hat Hacker

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: Links we talk about during our conversation: - Suz's article on live coding on freeCodeCamp: - NoClip video game development documentaries: - The Dream Machine by M. Mitchell Waldrop. Suz says it's "Dense and long, but the best narrative about how computing came to be." - 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."

2024-05-31•1hr 53mins
#50

#125 Open Source is Changing. The Changelog Host Jerod Santo Shows You How to Keep Up

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: Links we talk about during our conversation: Jerod's weekly Changelog News podcast that you should totally subscribe to (it's free): 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: Changelog Beats: And of course, my interview with Jerod and Adam about their developer journeys, and the history of The Changelog on its 10th anniversary:

2024-05-24•1hr 48mins

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