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 using 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 https://wixstudio.com 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 donate.freecodecamp.org We talk about: - Eamonn 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: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate 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: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/author/sieis/ Eamonn's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@eamonncottrell Excel-based esports: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2QC6VQXo8U Ultra Marathons: https://www.youtube.com/@runtired Got Sheet: https://www.gotsheet.xyz/ Progress and Perfection: https://www.progressandperfection.com/ Eamonn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eamonncottrell/ Eamonn on Twitter: https://x.com/EamonnCottrell

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: Colby's freeCodeCamp course on building a clone of Google Photos using AI tools and Next.js: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/create-a-google-photos-clone-with-nextjs-and-cloudinary/ Colby's Trailer and web design work: https://photowall-colbyfayock.vercel.app/wall/design Colby's ThinkGeek Modeling. He's legit a male model: https://photowall-colbyfayock.vercel.app/wall/thinkgeek Colby's music from his band years: https://soundcloud.com/colby-fayock/sets/day-late-hero The XKCD comic I mention about how the scope of developer work can be non-intuitive: https://xkcd.com/1425/

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: Her childhood in Mexico and in Texas Making the hard decision to drop out of architecture school Her dreadful years working as a salesperson Learning from freeCodeCamp and doing the 100DaysOfCode challenge Getting freelance clients and expanding her skills Her rapid career growth as a developer 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: Kass's portfolio of CSS art 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: dropping out of Yale getting into the selective Tech Stars startup accelerator Getting involved with Resilient Coders, a charity that helps court-involved youth learn coding Starting 100Devs and building a Discord server with 60,000 people learning to code together 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  

In this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson talks with developer-turned-CTO Cassidy Williams, also known as Cassidoo on Twitter and TikTok. 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.  Oh My Zsh is a framework for managing your Zsh configuration for your command line terminal. It's been extremely popular among developers for more than a decade. Robby is also the CEO of Planet Argon, a developer consultancy he created two decades ago. He's done work for Nike and lots of other companies. 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:  - Robby reading his classic "d'Oh My Zshell" article recording on an older freeCodeCamp podcast episode: https://freecodecamp.libsyn.com/site/ep-34-doh-my-zsh - The Sandi Metz interview episode of Maintainable that Robby mentions: https://maintainable.fm/episodes/sandi-metz-making-is-easy-mending-is-a-challenge - The Mighty Missoula (Robby's Post Rock band) live set: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63DE2tNlAWY - Planet Argon, the software development consultancy Robby co-founded two decades ago, and is CEO of: https://www.planetargon.com/

Beau Carnes has run the freeCodeCamp community YouTube channel for the past 5 years, taking it from 75,000 subscribers all the way up to 9 million. Beau started out working as a Special Education teacher at a Michigan high school. He taught himself how to code before working as a software engineer. He has since taught dozens of programming tutorials and helped curate more than 1,000 courses for the freeCodeCamp community YouTube channel. During our conversation, Beau shares the challenges he faced during his career transition as a father of 3 kids. He talks about how he finished a second degree in software development in just 6 months. And he even talks about his love of stilt-walking. For the first time ever, I've published this interview as a YouTube video podcast as well:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNPF0oPcMDs 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