Episoder
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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 thereSupport 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 11,384 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. You can join these chill human beings and help our mission by going to https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
Links we talk about during our conversation:
- Francesco's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@francescociulla
- Francesco's upcoming book on Rust: https://mybook.to/YJI6DI
- Francesco's personal website and all his links: https://www.francescociulla.com -
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 https://wixstudio.com.
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 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:
- Jesse's tutorials on freeCodeCamp: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/author/codeSTACKr/
- Jesse's course on how to set up and configure the VS Code editor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJEbVCrEMSE
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Manglende episoder?
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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 papersSupport 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 11,343 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. Join these kind folks and help our mission by going to https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
Links we talk about during our conversation:
- Caleb's course on Database Design: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/database-design-full-course-43233664125b/
- Caleb's system design lecture playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0e7yQ43bUtg&list=PL_c9BZzLwBRLSs6x50D5WIH76VCUxJs9E
- Caleb on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/calebcurry/
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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 developerSupport 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 11,243 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. Join these kind folks and help our mission by going to https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
Links we talk about during our conversation:
"How to be the ideal newb" article: https://jvns.ca/blog/good-questions/ "Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle" book that Anjana mentions: https://www.amazon.com/Burnout-Secret-Unlocking-Stress-Cycle/dp/198481706X Anjana's website: https://anjana.dev/ -
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 freeSupport 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 11,043 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. Join these kind folks and help our mission by going to https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
Links we talk about during our conversation:
- Vaughn's YouTube channel and his approach to pursuing multiple skills in tandem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTnsjmsgJS8
- Vaughn on Instagram where he posts guitar: https://www.instagram.com/vaughngene/
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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 https://wixstudio.com.
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 https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
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 consultancyLinks we talk about during our conversation:
- Julia's website: https://www.juliaundeutsch.com/
- Movie trailer for the 1999 Clive Owen movie "Croupier" that Quincy mentions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDWzeq5QGiA
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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 gamesSupport 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 11,224 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. Join these kind folks and help our mission by going to https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
Links we talk about during our conversation:
- Peggy's GameDev company, Ego AI: https://www.egoai.com/
- Quincy's interview with hardware engineer Bruno Haid that he mentions toward the end of this episode: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/podcast-hardware-engineering-bruno-haid/
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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 https://wixstudio.com.
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 https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
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 changingLinks we talk about during our conversation:
- Rishab's Terraform course on freeCodeCamp: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-use-terraform-to-deploy-a-site-on-google-cloud-platform/
- Rishab's LangChain LLM deployment course on freeCodeCamp: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-langchain-for-llm-development/
- Learn to Cloud guide by Rishab and his friend at Microsoft, Gwyn: https://learntocloud.guide/
- Rishab's YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@rishabincloud/videos
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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 https://wixstudio.com.
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 https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
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 learnQuincy 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 / yearLinks we talk about during our conversation:
- Lane's 4-hour course on how to get a job as a developer: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-get-a-developer-job/
- Lane's 5-hour HTTP Networking course: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/http-networking-protocol-course/
- Lane's SQL for Web Developers course: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/sql-for-web-devs/
- Lane's freely available books published through freeCodeCamp Press: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/author/wagslane/
- Khan Academy founder's talk on mastery learning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MTRxRO5SRA
- The Zone of Proxmial Development education concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_of_proximal_development -
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 https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
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 AICan you guess what song I'm playing in the intro?
Links we talk about during our conversation:
- Jiquan's company, Lutra AI: https://lutra.ai/
- Jiquan's article on generative agentic interfaces for working with large spreadsheets: https://blog.lutra.ai/generative-interfaces-for-ai-agents
- Jiquan's article on OODA loops for AI Agents: https://blog.lutra.ai/ooda-loops-for-ai-agents
- A paper Jiquan mentions, Executable Code Actions Elicit Better LLM Agents: https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.01030
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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 learningIn 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 https://wixstudio.com.
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 https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
Links we talk about during our conversation:
- Elliot's Mojo course on freeCodeCamp: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/new-mojo-programming-language-for-ai-developers/
- Elliot's Cuda GPU programming course on freeCodeCamp: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-cuda-programming/
- Elliot's Python course on building an LLM from scratch: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-build-a-large-language-model-from-scratch-using-python/
- Elliot's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@elliotarledge
- Elliot's many projects on GitHub: https://github.com/Infatoshi
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Take our year-end freeCodeCamp podcast listener survey real quick: https://forms.gle/2M9NW776723uSdDT7
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 https://wixstudio.com.
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 https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
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 CSSLinks we talk about during our conversation:
- Kevin's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/kevinpowell
- Original Space Jam website Kevin mentions: https://www.spacejam.com/1996/
- The article that coined the term Responsive Design: https://alistapart.com/article/responsive-web-design/
- Kevin's freeCodeCamp article on how learning skateboarding helped him out of tutorial hell: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-learning-to-skateboard-helped-me-find-a-way-out-of-tutorial-hell/
- Kevin's freeCodeCamp course on building and deploying a portfolio page: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-build-a-portfolio-website-and-deploy-to-digital-ocean/
- Playable Minesweeper in CSS that Quincy mentions: https://codepen.io/bali_balo/pen/BLJONZ
- Acknowledged mistakes that are permanently coded into CSS: https://wiki.csswg.org/ideas/mistakes
- Talk on why is CSS so weird: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHUtMbJw8iA
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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 https://wixstudio.com.
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 https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
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 tutorialsLinks we talk about during our conversation:
James's website: https://www.jamesqquick.com/
Jevon's Paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
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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 outCan 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: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate
Links we talk about during our conversation:
- The Syntax podcast: https://syntax.fm/
- Scott's archive of more than 1,000 programming tutorials he taught on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@syntaxfm/videos
- The Honeypot documentary about Scott (8 minute watch): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9eh2iJsjxE
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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 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 https://donate.freecodecamp.org
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 6Can 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
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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
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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 waterlineCan 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/
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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 communityCan 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
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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
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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 eachCan 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/
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