The freeCodeCamp Podcast

Today Quincy Larson interviews Carl Brown, who runs the Internet of Bugs YouTube channel and has worked as a dev at Amazon, IBM, Sun Microsystems, and startups for over 37 years. We talk about: - The hype versus the utility in LLMs and agent code generation tools - Why you might want to target developer jobs at smaller companies, and how these differ from "big tech" - How everyone will face agism eventually. Carl argues that a consulting career is a great escape hatch. Support for this podcast comes from the 10,113 kind folks who donate to our charity each month. Join them and support our mission at https://donate.freecodecamp.org Get a freeCodeCamp tshirt for $20 with free shipping anywhere in the US: https://shop.freecodecamp.org Links from our discussion: - My interview with Stack Overflow founder Joel Spolsky whom we discuss: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/trello-stack-overflow-founder-joel-spolsky-podcast-interview/ - Quincy's free book "How to learn to code and get a developer job": https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-to-code-book/ Ted Chiang "ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web" article Carl mentions:  https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/chatgpt-is-a-blurry-jpeg-of-the-web The Karpathy on Moltbook saga:     //Karpathy hyping up MoltBook     https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2017370646767145419 //Noon Jan 30     //Doubles Down after "being accused of overhyping" Moltbook     https://x.com/karpathy/status/2017442712388309406 // 9:39 PM  Jan 30     // Tweet showing Karpathy's (redacted) private information from a MoltBook security breach     https://x.com/theonejvo/status/2017732898632437932 // 4:53PM Jan 31     // Fortune quotes Karpathy saying MoltBook is "a dumpster fire, and I also definitely do not recommend that people run this stuff on their computers"     https://fortune.com/2026/02/02/moltbook-security-agents-singularity-disaster-gary-marcus-andrej-karpathy/  // Feb 2 Quote from Cory Doctorow about code failing well: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/06/1000x-liability/  Excerpt from Cory's Mastodon with that quote in it: https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/115848576290992814 Mastodon from Carl to Cory telling him I'm going to use that quote (which he boosted): https://mastodon.social/@carlbrown/115867074293449215 Article on Claude 4.6 being good at finding bugs with fuzzing: https://red.anthropic.com/2026/zero-days/ Reference to it from Computer Security Guru Bruce Schneier: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/02/llms-are-getting-a-lot-better-and-faster-at-finding-and-exploiting-zero-days.html  Older paper on LLMs being good at fuzzing prior to this new claim about claude 4.6: https://arxiv.org/html/2508.01750v1 Falsehoods programmers believe about names from Patio11: https://img.sauf.ca/pictures/2025-10-23/61fb6db44e7173cd9318753c955f7dda.pdf Same kind of article, but this one is about time instead of names (Carl said he was wrong in that Partick/Patio11 didn't write this one, but it's worth passing along): https://infiniteundo.com/post/25509354022/more-falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-time Article with discussion of ageism in tech with the Zuckerberg quote Carl was thinking of: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenkotler/2015/02/14/is-silicon-valley-ageist-or-just-smart/ Book on (interpersonal) networking that Carl recommends:  https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/227558/never-eat-alone-expanded-and-updated-by-keith-ferrazzi-and-tahl-raz/ And another one: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/105512/dig-your-well-before-youre-thirsty-by-harvey-mackay/ Carl's video on how AdTech is fracturing Society: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmYXyWbis9w Carl's Website: https://internetofbugs.com/ Community news section: 1. freeCodeCamp just published a comprehensive course that will teach you the fundamental concepts, protocols, and architectures of computer networking. You'll learn key network engineering topics like topology, subnetting, flow control, routing, IPv4 addressing, DNS, and more. (12 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/computer-networking-fundamentals/ 2. And we just published our second-ever chess course. This time you'll learn the Italian Game, one of the most common chess openings. This handbook and accompanying video course are taught by freeCodeCamp engineer Ihechikara Abba, who has a chess Elo rating of 2285. He will lay out the many traps that white can set for black, and how to not fall for them. (full-length handbook and 1 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/the-chess-italian-game-handbook-traps-for-white/ 3. freeCodeCamp also published a full-length book on Product-Led Research. This is a must-read for any manager within a tech company. It's written by a CTO and security researcher named Omer Rosenbaum, who says: "if you manage Research like it's Development, things aren't going to go well for you." He breaks down the most common research frameworks and methodologies, and contextualizes them through a series of case studies. (full-length book): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/product-led-research-a-practical-guide-for-randd-leaders-full-book/ 4. If you're a Python developer and use the Django web development framework, this tutorial will help you optimize the heck out of your APIs. Mari will teach you how to use profiling and logging to find bottlenecks in your codebase. Then she'll show you how to get extra performance through caching, so you can serve users at scale. (20 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-optimize-django-rest-apis-for-performance/ 5. Today's song of the week is 1984 synth jazz classic "No One Emotion" by George Benson. I love the driving synth bass, the vocal harmonies, and excellent guitar solo by Michael Sambello – the guy who made the She's a Maniac song. If you're looking for a pick me up jam this song any day of the week. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-MyvbolxG0

Today Quincy Larson interviews Shawn Wang. He's a software engineer, founder of the AI Engineer conference, and host of the Latent Space podcast focused on applying the latest models toward getting work done. We talk about: - How even if LLMs plateau, there will be still paths to better output through surrounding harness code - And three big areas researchers are exploring to further improve model performance: World Models, Multi-modality, and Embodied AI - Which skills Shawn thinks are most important for developers going forward - And why Shawn thinks you should switch your own self teaching from "just-in-time learning" to "just-in-case learning" Support for this podcast comes from the 10,113 kind folks who donate to our charity each month. Join them and support our mission at https://donate.freecodecamp.org Get a freeCodeCamp tshirt for $20 with free shipping anywhere in the US: https://shop.freecodecamp.org Links from our discussion: - Shawn's Tiny Teams Playbook: https://www.latent.space/p/tiny - Shawn's interview with FeiFei Li: https://www.latent.space/p/after-llms-spatial-intelligence-and?utm_source=publication-search - Boots Theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory - Wirth's Law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law - Adversarial Reasoning: https://www.latent.space/p/adversarial-reasoning Community news section: 1. freeCodeCamp just published a comprehensive course that will teach you how to use the security-focused Kali Linux operating system. You'll learn how to identify, exploit, and defend against real-world vulnerabilities. You'll also build a solid foundation in penetration testing, network security, and vulnerability assessment. Most importantly, you'll learn how to think like a security engineer and leverage tools of the trade like Nmap and Wireshark. (4 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-cybersecurity-and-ethical-hacking-using-kali-linux/ 2. freeCodeCamp also published a guide to passing the Certified Kubernetes Administrator Exam. Beau Carnes teaches this course, which will walk you through key DevOps concepts. You'll start by setting up your K8s practice environment. Then you'll bootstrap a multi-node cluster and your control plane. You'll learn about Helm, High Availability Autoscaling, CoreDNS, and more. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/prepare-for-the-kubernetes-administrator-certification-and-pass/ 3. We also just published a full-length handbook on freeCodeCamp Press that you can read right in your browser. It will teach you modern React data fetching best practices. You'll learn how to leverage Suspense, ErrorBoundary, and the new Use API. If you're interested in web development, this is well worth bookmarking. (full length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/the-modern-react-data-fetching-handbook-suspense-use-and-errorboundary-explained/ 5. Finally, I'm proud to share this new DevOps course that freeCodeCamp instructor Gavin Lon just published. You'll learn how to take a full stack app on your local machine and ship it to a fully containerized production environment. Along the way, you'll learn about CI/CD pipelines, Docker images, launching containers, and more. By the end of the course, you'll have a professional-grade pipeline that automatically builds and deploys updates with every push. (4 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/build-a-production-ready-pipeline-with-docker-cicd-and-hostinger/ 5. Today's song of the week is the 1980 classic "Turn me Loose" by Canadian band Loverboy. Build on top of a super catchy syncopated bassline, this song has some super expressive vocals, buzzing synths, percussive piano, and the guitar solo is top shelf. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnHm4ro_l8s

Today 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 software consultancy he created two decades ago. He's done work for Nike and lots of other companies. Note that this discussion is aimed at more advanced devs and engineering managers. We talk about: - How a "Don't let that happen again" culture can make it take forever to get new code into production, and how to reverse this - Tips for reducing your team's dependency on that one developer who's been there for years - Robby's perspective on LLM tools and how they're speeding up his workflows Support for this podcast comes from the 10,113 kind folks who donate to our charity each month. Join them and support our mission at https://donate.freecodecamp.org Get a freeCodeCamp tshirt for $20 with free shipping anywhere in the US: https://shop.freecodecamp.org Links from our discussion: - My previous interview of Robby with his full journey: from painting houses to running a popular open source tool (2 hour listen): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/podcast-oh-my-zsh-creator-and-ceo-robby-russell/ - 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 - A recent interview Robby did with Kent Beck, the software engineer who created the Extreme Programming agile methodology, on his Maintainable Podcast: https://maintainable.fm/episodes/kent-l-beck-youre-ignoring-optionality-and-paying-for-it - Robby's Robby on Rails blog he's been maintaining for over 20 years: https://robbyonrails.com/links/ - Robby's "On Rails" podcast, the official podcast of the Ruby on Rails framework: https://onrails.buzzsprout.com/ - The Mighty Missoula (Robby's Post Rock band): https://mightymissoula.com/ - The Ghostty cross-platform terminal that Robby recommended: https://ghostty.org/ - The fzf command line fuzzy finder tool Robby recommended: https://github.com/junegunn/fzf - The new omarchy Linux distribution Robby recommended: https://omarchy.org/ Community news section: 1. Learn to code in Python from one of the greatest living Computer Science professors, Harvard's David J. Malan. This is the 2026 version of the famous CS50 course. It will teach you Python programming fundamentals like functions, conditionals, loops, libraries, file I/O, and more. If you're new to Python, or to coding in general, this is an excellent place to start. (25 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/harvard-cs50-2026-free-computer-science-university-course 2. That Harvard computer science course will get you started with programming. But where do you go from there? freeCodeCamp just published a helpful tutorial that will help you bridge from beginner projects to building real-world applications that solve real-world problems. (40 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-go-from-hello-world-to-building-real-world-applications/ 3. freeCodeCamp also just published a comprehensive intro to OpenClaw. If you've heard of Clawd Bot or Moltbot, this is the same tool, which they renamed to avoid confusion with the Claude LLM tool. OpenClaw is an agent and messaging gateway that lets you automate digital tasks through platforms like Discord. First you'll learn how to set it up. Then you'll learn security practices like implementing Docker-based sandboxing to protect your host system while your agent executes complicated workflows on your behalf. (1 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/openclaw-full-tutorial-for-beginners 4. You may be using Bluetooth as you read this. It's been a key networking tool since 1999, and now it's getting 3 major upgrades: Passive Scanning, Bond Loss Reasons, and propagation of Service UUIDs. If you're interested in network engineering or IoT–style devices, this tutorial is well worth your read. (90 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-aosp-16-bluetooth-scanner-works-the-ultimate-guide/ 5. Today's song of the week is 2009 banger Sometimes by Australian band Miami Horror. I love the layers Peter Hooke-style guitar riff, the anthemic snyths, and the driving bassline. This is a perfect song to start of your morning. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fn7FXGaHTNs

Today Quincy Larson interviews Tapas Adhikari. He's a software engineer who runs a firm of 20 developers who build projects for companies around the world. He's also a prolific teacher, having written 300 programming tutorials - including 47 for freeCodeCamp – and runs a popular English and Bangla-language YouTube channels. We talk about: - The changing nature of software engineering - Tips for building your own fully-remote software development firm and landing clients abroad - Lessons from mentoring more than 500 developers over the years Support for this podcast comes from the 10,104 kind folks who donate to our charity each month. Join them and support our mission at https://donate.freecodecamp.org Get a freeCodeCamp tshirt for $20 with free shipping anywhere in the US: https://shop.freecodecamp.org Links from our discussion: - Tapas's handbook on how to get started contributing to open source projects (required reading IMHO): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/a-practical-guide-to-start-opensource-contributions/ - Tapas's many tutorials and handbooks on freeCodeCamp: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/author/atapas/ - The developer firm Tapas co-founded and nows runs with more than a dozen developers: https://www.creowis.com/ - Tapas's personal website: https://www.tapasadhikary.com/ - Tapas's English-langauge programming tutorial YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@tapasadhikary Community news section: 1. freeCodeCamp just published a new Python Data Structures & Algorithms course that will help you understand key Dynamic Programming patterns. These approaches come up all the time in technical interviews. You'll learn Constant Transition, the Grid Pattern, Two Sequences, Interval DP, Non-Constant Transition, Knapsack-like problems, and more. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-dynamic-programming-through-dynamic-visuals/ 2. If you're interested in building projects on top of Large Language Models, freeCodeCamp just published a Python course on Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). You'll learn how to turn documents into embeddings then store them in vector databases. The course will also walk you through building your own Model Context Protocol (MCP) server. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-rag-and-mcp-fundamentals/ 3. Learn How Execution Context Works in JavaScript. If you're a JS dev, this is essential reading. You'll learn about interpretation vs compilation. Then you'll see how Node.js and the V8 engine load and execute code. (full length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-execution-context-works-in-javascript-handbook/ 4. Finally, this weekend you can build your own fully-playable horror game based on the legendary "The Backrooms" liminal space. For some reason my kids are terrified of this weirdly normal-looking office setting. You'll build your own environment using Unreal Engine 5 and the Blueprints visual scripting tool that abstracts away all the C++ code for you. Throw in a body-cam style camera perspective and some creepy monsters and you'll have the perfect way to scare friends and family alike. (3 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/build-a-the-backrooms-game-in-unreal-engine-5/ 5. Today's song of the week is And the Cradle Will Rock off Van Halen's 1980 album Women and Children first. The song starts out with a groove on a heavily distorted Wurlitzer elctromechanical piano. I love Michael Anthony's 8th note bassline and the loose high hats under Eddie Van Halen's guitar solo. This is a great lunch break song. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11mBDT5mpdw

Today Quincy Larson interviews Sumit Saha, a software engineer and prolific teacher on YouTube. Sumit is based in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where he runs a developer agency building projects for clients throughout Asia. We talk about: - How the hunger for learning is dying and people are increasingly drawn to shortcuts over taking the time to truly understand concepts - Sumit's information diet and his tips for expanding your skills - 5 key developer concepts explained like you're 5 Support comes from the 10,104 kind folks who donate to our charity each month. Join them and support our mission at https://donate.freecodecamp.org Get a freeCodeCamp tshirt for $20 with free shipping anywhere in the US: https://shop.freecodecamp.org Links from our discussion: - Sumit's many freeCodeCamp handbooks and tutorials: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/author/sumitsaha/ - Sumit's website: https://www.sumitsaha.me/ - Sumit's Bangla-language YouTube Channel: https://youtube.com/@LearnwithSumit - Sumit's English YouTube Channel: https://youtube.com/@logicBaseLabs Community news section: 1. I spent three days at the San Francisco Palace of Fine Arts recording a documentary about the world's largest collegiate hackathon. More than 3,000 student developers participated in this year's UC Berkeley Cal Hacks hackathon. Over the course of 36 hours, they built a broad array of projects, then demo'd them to judges from industry. I now present to you the finished documentary. I hope you find it both enjoyable and inspiring. (80-minute documentary): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/inside-cal-hacks-2025-36-hours-at-the-worlds-largest-collegiate-hackathon/ 2. freeCodeCamp also published a new course on building your own custom Kubernetes operators and controllers from scratch. You'll learn everything from the internal architecture of Informers and Caches to advanced concepts like Finalizers and Idempotency. If you're interested in DevOps, this is the course for you. (6 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/build-your-own-kubernetes-operators-with-go-and-kubebuilder/ 3. Learn how to select the best GPU for economically training your models and running inference workloads. This no-nonsense guide will help you understand why certain specs matter more than others. It will also help you navigate around common pitfalls when buying or renting GPUs. (35 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-choose-the-best-gpu-for-your-ai-workloads/ 4. Learn how to benchmark embedding models using your own custom data. This course will walk you through leveraging Vision Language Models for precise text extraction. You'll also learn how to use LLMs to generate synthetic evaluation data. Finally, you'll get exposure to the rigorous statistical tests that can help you find the best models for whatever hardware you have on hand. (4 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-benchmark-embedding-models-on-your-own-data/ 5. Our song of the week: Supergroup The Power Station's 1985 hit "Some Like it Hot". This entire album features incredible drumming by Chic drummer Tony Thompson. And with Bass and Guitars by Duran Duran's John Taylor and Andy Taylor, the whole song has insane groove. 80s icon Robert Palmer sings and brings the texture. The guy reportedly smoked 60 cigarettes a day and paid the price a few years later, but man is his voice golden on this recording. Fun fact: Duran Duran's official site says they achieved the massive drum sound by putting mics at the top of a nearby elevator shaft. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hw1t7OCESUw

Today Quincy Larson interviews Mike McQuaid. He's a software engineer who previously worked at GitHub, and now serves as lead maintainer of Homebrew, a Mac package manager used by tens of millions of developers. He's based in Edinburgh, Scottland. He's worked remotely as a dev for nearly two decades. We talk about: - What does a career in open source really look like - What skills are going to be the most important going forward - How big open source infrastructure really gets written and maintained Support for this podcast is provided by a grant from AlgoMonster. AlgoMonster is a platform that teaches data structure and algorithm patterns in a structured sequence, so you can approach technical interview questions more systematically. Their curriculum covers patterns like sliding window, two-pointers, graph search, and dynamic programming, helping you learn each pattern once and apply it to solve many problems. Start a structured interview prep routine at https://algo.monster/freecodecamp Support also comes from the 10,104 kind folks who donate to our charity each month. Join them and support our mission at https://donate.freecodecamp.org Get a freeCodeCamp tshirt for $20 with free shipping anywhere in the US: https://shop.freecodecamp.org Links from our discussion: - Mike's podcast, Minimum Viable Management: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdx6vnBOYrMZw3ZHjJJyItqQuZQhTIzhc - Homebrew 5.0 announcement with changelog: https://brew.sh/2025/11/12/homebrew-5.0.0/ - POSSE approach to social media: https://indieweb.org/POSSE Community news section: 1. freeCodeCamp just published a book that will teach you the math that powers most AI systems. Even if you haven't studied math since high school, you may find this book helpful in expanding your understanding of the layers of abstraction underpinning these emerging tools. You'll learn key concepts in statistics, linear algebra, calculus, and optimization theory. You'll also get a healthy dose of mathematical history. (free full-length book): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/the-math-behind-artificial-intelligence-book/ 2. And if you're finding the sudden surge in AI tools to be overwhelming, freeCodeCamp just published this practical guide to using them effectively. This tutorial will separate the utility from the hype. You'll learn how to minimize hallucinations with Context Management. You'll also learn about agentic tools and in-editor assistants. It even has tips for how to prevent your own developer skills from atrophying, so you can adopt these tools without becoming overly dependent on them. (35 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-not-be-overwhelmed-by-ai/ 3. freeCodeCamp also published a course on React Optimization. You'll learn key React design patterns to achieve a screaming-fast front end. This course covers memoization, derived states, throttling, debouncing, concurrency, virtualization, and more. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-optimize-react/ 4. Learn modern music production using the popular FruityLoops Studio Digital Audio Workstation tool. This FL Studio course will teach you sound design fundamentals, mixing, filters, drum sequencing, basslines, synth melodies, and even advanced concepts like kick drum ducking. You can play along at home and by the end of the course you'll have your own bass house track you can share with your friends. (3 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-music-production-with-fl-studio/ 5. This week's song of the week is the 2022 song "Ditto" by Korean pop group New Jeans. I like the song feels slow and relaxed even though the tempo is really fast. It has really minimalist production - mainly just 808 drums and vocals. Perfect late night listening. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6TEcoNUmc8

Today Quincy Larson interviews Zubin Pratap, a software engineer and manager from Melbourne, Australia. After nearly two decades working as a corporate lawyer, he taught himself programming using freeCodeCamp.org. Within two years, he landed a job as a software engineer at Google. We talk about: - How tools are making programming easier, but other parts of being a developer harder - How 2009 - 2022 was NOT a normal job market and how devs are adapting - "The purpose of communication is to be understood" and other lessons Zubin's learned over the years Support for this podcast is provided by a grant from AlgoMonster. AlgoMonster is a platform that teaches data structure and algorithm patterns in a structured sequence, so you can approach technical interview questions more systematically. Their curriculum covers patterns like sliding window, two-pointers, graph search, and dynamic programming, helping you learn each pattern once and apply it to solve many problems. Start a structured interview prep routine at https://algo.monster/freecodecamp Support also comes from the 10,104 kind folks who donate to our charity each month. Join them and support our mission at https://donate.freecodecamp.org Get a freeCodeCamp tshirt for $20 with free shipping anywhere in the US: https://shop.freecodecamp.org Links from our discussion: - Zubin's LinkedIn and other social media: https://meetzubin.carrd.co/ - Zubin's "Easier said than done" podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ky4Hhd-k1js&list=PLAPuklwJx5V3fpXiSD9CMh3RhPQTCSemj Community news section: 1. Let's kick off 2026 with a ton of announcements. We just launched Version 10 of freeCodeCamp's JavaScript certification, along with updated Python, SQL, and Responsive Web Design certifications that you can earn. We even launched our beta Spanish and Mandarin Chinese curricula. (10 minute announcement article with tons of data): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/christmas-gifts-freecodecamp-community-2025 2. Now you can learn Spanish on freeCodeCamp. We just launched our FREE A1 Level Spanish curriculum. You'll learn: pronunciation, introductions, numbers, and more. More than 200 steps are live now. ¡Aprendamos! https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/freecodecamps-a1-professional-spanish-curriculum-beta-is-now-live/ 3. Over the holiday break I took my kids to Johnson Space Center in Houston. If you're in Houston you should absolutely go here. We visited the Mission Control center that NASA used during the Apollo missions to the moon. They also had an awesome multimedia experience created by Tom Hanks about this year's Artemis mission to the moon. This is an incredible museum. We spent 7 hours there. It wasn't particularly expensive. Just make sure you book tickets to mission control a few months in advance of your trip. 4. During the road trip, I re-listened to Guns 'n' Roses's entire catalogue. Which brings me to today's song of the week: the 1991 epic Estranged. The is maybe the most mature-sounding song they've ever done, with introspective lyrics and a series of tastful, emotional guitar solos. Great drum fills, too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpmAY059TTY

Today Quincy Larson interviews Santosh Yadav. The son of a textile worker, he grew up inner-city Mumbai and studied hard to get into university. From there he's worked as a software engineer for 16 years. Along the way, he's picked up every distinction imaginable including Google Developer Expert, GitHub Star, and Microsoft MVP. Santosh shares tips for: - How to get promoted as an Individual Contributor without needing to becoming a manager - How to rise within a company without needing to change jobs to move up - How to succeed socially on a team while working remotely remotely - How to not just survive but thrive after a Type 2 Diabetes diagnosis Support for this podcast is provided by a grant from AlgoMonster. AlgoMonster is a platform that teaches data structure and algorithm patterns in a structured sequence, so you can approach technical interview questions more systematically. Their curriculum covers patterns like sliding window, two-pointers, graph search, and dynamic programming, helping you learn each pattern once and apply it to solve many problems. Start a structured interview prep routine at https://algo.monster/freecodecamp Support also comes from the 10,338 kind folks who donate to our charity each month. Join them and support our mission at https://donate.freecodecamp.org Get a freeCodeCamp tshirt for $20 with free shipping anywhere in the US: https://shop.freecodecamp.org Links from our discussion: - Santosh's freeCodeCamp article: "From the Slums of Mumbai to a Rented Apartment – My 30-Year Developer Journey": https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/my-journey-into-tech-from-slums-of-mumbai-to-my-own-apartment/ - Santosh's freeCodeCamp article "My Developer Journey – How I Got a Remote Job and Increased My Salary While Contributing to Open Source": https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/my-developer-journey-how-i-increased-my-salary-and-got-a-remote-job/ - Santosh's journey to Staff Engineer and tips for getting promoted as an IC: https://www.santoshyadav.dev/blog/2025-03-29-my-journey-to-staff-engineer/ - Santosh's podcast on working in tech: https://www.youtube.com/c/ThisisTechTalks -Santosh's article on how he realized he was introducing toxicity as a manager: https://dev.to/this-is-learning/how-i-made-workplace-toxic-1ici Community news section: 1. freeCodeCamp just launched our new JavaScript Data Structures and Algorithms Certification and our new Python certification. The are 300-hour interactive courses. You can now take the final exams for both of these and earn a free verified certification, which you can then it to your LinkedIn, CV, résumé, or personal website. These are part of version 10 of the core freeCodeCamp curriculum. The community collectively spent thousands of hours developing all this to serve as your shortest path to acquiring programming fundamentals. (300 hour interactive curriculum – announcement article and FAQ): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/freecodecamps-new-javascript-certification-is-now-live/ and https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/freecodecamps-new-python-certification-is-now-live/ 2. Tell your friends who are learning English: freeCodeCamp just launched our English for Developers curriculum. You can learn vocab, grammar, reading, and listening – all through stories set in a Silicon Valley tech company. This is level A2 English, meaning it's lower intermediate. We'll introduce other CEFR levels in the coming months as well. (interactive curriculum with certification – announcement article and FAQ): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/freecodecamps-a2-english-for-developers-certification-is-now-live/ 3. Now you can learn Spanish on freeCodeCamp. We just launched our FREE Spanish curriculum. You'll learn: pronunciation, introductions, numbers, and more. More than 200 steps are live now. The rest of CEFR level A1 will go live in 2026. ¡Aprendamos! https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/freecodecamps-a1-professional-spanish-curriculum-beta-is-now-live/ 4. Today's song of the week is the 1982 Disco Soul anthem "Walk on By" by D Train. You'll love the busy synth bass and soaring strings. Even though it's a sad song, I've listened to this song dozens of times and it never fails to pick me up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmEgxqSnHXQ

Today Quincy Larson interviews Jason Lengstorf. He's a college dropout who taught himself programming while building websites for his emo band. 22 years later he's worked as a developer at IBM, Netlify, run his own dev consultancy, and he now runs CodeTV making reality TV shows for developers. We talk about: - How many CEOs over-estimated the impact of AI coding tools and laid off too many devs, whom they're now trying to rehire - Why the developer job market has already rebounded a bit, but will never be the same - Tips for how to land roles in the post-LLM résumé spam job search era - How devs are working to rebuild the fabric of the community through in-person community events Support for this podcast is provided by a grant from AlgoMonster. AlgoMonster is a platform that teaches data structure and algorithm patterns in a structured sequence, so you can approach technical interview questions more systematically. Their curriculum covers patterns like sliding window, two-pointers, graph search, and dynamic programming, helping you learn each pattern once and apply it to solve many problems. Start a structured interview prep routine at https://algo.monster/freecodecamp Support also comes from the 10,338 kind folks who donate to our charity each month. Join them and support our mission at https://donate.freecodecamp.org Get a freeCodeCamp tshirt for $20 with free shipping anywhere in the US: https://shop.freecodecamp.org Links from our discussion: - Jason's previous freeCodeCamp podcast interview, with his developer origin story: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/from-drop-out-to-software-architect-with-jason-lengstorf-podcast-167/ - The first season of Web Dev Challenge on CodeTV: https://codetv.link/wdc  Community news section: 1. freeCodeCamp just published a Git and GitHub for beginners course. Git is a powerful version control tool that most developers now use to build software projects together. GitHub is a popular platform that adds tons of collaboration features on top of Git. You'll learn the basics of both in this course, which covers branching, merging, pull requests, and other key concepts. Well worth your time. (1 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/git-and-github-crash-course-for-beginners 2. freeCodeCamp also just launched our new Responsive Web Design Certification. You can now take the final exam and earn this verified cert, then add it to your LinkedIn, CV, or personal website. This is version 10 of the core fCC curriculum. The community collectively spent thousands of hours developing all this as your shortest path to front-end development skills. This announcement and comprehensive FAQ will help you figure out where this fits into your journey toward your learning goals. (100+ hour interactive curriculum): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/freecodecamps-new-responsive-web-design-certification-is-now-live/ 3. freeCodeCamp also just published a new Harvard CS50 course that will teach you R, a popular programming language for statistical computing and data science. You'll work with real-world datasets inside the RStudio Integrated Development Environment. You'll learn about Vectors, Matrices, Data Frames, filtering, visualizations, and more. (9 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-r-programming-from-harvard-university/ 4. freeCodeCamp's JavaScript certification is now live. It's 1,033 steps long. and you'll build dozens of projects then sit for the final exam. This is a FREE verified certification you can earn then add to your LinkedIn, CV, and portfolio website. Dive in. Full announcement article and FAQ (5 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/freecodecamps-new-javascript-certification-is-now-live/ 5. Today's song of the week is 1982's soul classic Risin' to the Top by Keni Burke. I love the laid back bass groove and spacious piano chords. The lyrics are about overcoming setbacks, which I know anyone who's attempted to learn programming can relate to. https://youtu.be/euysGPy2t0M

Today Quincy Larson interviews Kunal Kushwaha. He's a software engineer and prolific computer science teacher on YouTube. He failed the JEE, the Indian Engineering Entrance Exam, TWICE. But he persevered. He did 4 years of university but attended ZERO lectures. Instead he built his own learning path by contributed to open source projects and using free learning resources including freeCodeCamp. He moved from Delhi to London on a UK Global Talent Visa. He works at Cast AI and is the founder of the WeMakeDevs community. We'll talk about: - How he teaches himself new skills, then teaches those skills through his YouTube channel - His day-to-day working remotely at startups - His role in building out cloud regions as a field CTO at Civo, a cloud native service provider - The Indian higher education system Support for this podcast is provided by a grant from AlgoMonster. AlgoMonster is a platform that teaches data structure and algorithm patterns in a structured sequence, so you can approach technical interview questions more systematically. Their curriculum covers patterns like sliding window, two-pointers, graph search, and dynamic programming, helping you learn each pattern once and apply it to solve many problems. Start a structured interview prep routine at https://algo.monster/freecodecamp Support also comes from the 10,338 kind folks who donate to our charity each month. Join them and support our mission at https://donate.freecodecamp.org Rep the freeCodeCamp community with pride. Get your fCC t-shirt for $20 with free shipping anywhere in the US: https://shop.freecodecamp.org Links from our discussion: - Kunal's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@KunalKushwaha - WeMakeDevs, an inclusive global community for anyone passionate about technology that puts on events: https://www.wemakedevs.org/ - CastAI where Kunal now works: https://cast.ai/ Community news section: 1. freeCodeCamp's New Responsive Web Design Certification is now live. You can now take the final exam and earn this FREE verified cert, then add it to your LinkedIn, CV, or personal website. Announcement article: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/freecodecamps-new-responsive-web-design-certification-is-now-live/ 2. Before modern Large Language Models, scientists and developers worked with more fundamental Natural Language Processing tools. freeCodeCamp just published a handbook that will help you understand the tools that power chatbots, machine translation, text summarization, and more. You'll learn how computers analyze syntax, model semantics, and interpret context. Then you'll use popular Python libraries to apply those concepts to real projects. (full length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-use-nlp-techniques-and-tools-in-your-projects-full-handbook/ 3. freeCodeCamp also published a handbook that will give you a nuanced understanding of one of the trickier aspects of JavaScript development: Closures. First you'll learn about functions, parameters, and lexical scope. Then you'll learn how a Closure "closes over" a variable to keep it safe, while still granting you access to its values through function calls. If this sounds complicated, it is. But fear not – this handbook will give you tons of code examples of Closure mechanics, and teach you when to use them. (full length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-closures-work-in-javascript-a-handbook-for-developers/ 4. Flexbox is a powerful CSS feature that lets you build user interfaces that fit any screen size. If you've ever struggled to center something with CSS or tried to make columns line up nicely, well, Flexbox simplifies this dramatically. freeCodeCamp just published a Flexbox for beginners course where you'll learn both the concepts and the code syntax while building a responsive website navigation bar. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-css-flexbox-for-beginners-free-2-hour-course 5. When you're working with Large Language Models, every additional token adds cost and latency. Microsoft just open-sourced a tool called LLMLingua that will compress your prompts and other context window data. freeCodeCamp published this tutorial to help you understand how this works and how you can add it to your Python projects. (10 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-compress-your-prompts-and-reduce-llm-costs/ 6. It is with great pride that I announce our Top Open Source Contributors of 2025. It's been a super productive year for the global freeCodeCamp community. As we start our 12th year as a community, we're firing on all cylinders, pushing forward more steadily than ever toward a future of open source education: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/freecodecamp-top-open-source-contributors-2025 7. Today's song of the week is 1983 anthem Rock of Ages by British rock band Def Leppard. This is a silly, feel-good song with excellent vocal harmonies and massive-sounding drums. As a kid, when I saw the music video with the singer wielding a giant sword in a cave it blew my mind.

Today Quincy Larson interviews Andrea Griffiths, who taught herself programming using freeCodeCamp while working in construction. She moved to the US from Colombia when she was 17, and within 6 months she joined the US Army. She ran a chain of gyms before landing a support role at a tech company, then ascending to Product Manager and ultimately Developer Advocate at GitHub. Support for this podcast is provided by a grant from AlgoMonster. AlgoMonster is a platform that teaches data structure and algorithm patterns in a structured sequence, so you can approach technical interview questions more systematically. Their curriculum covers patterns like sliding window, two-pointers, graph search, and dynamic programming, helping you learn each pattern once and apply it to solve many problems. Start a structured interview prep routine at https://algo.monster/freecodecamp Support also comes from the 10,338 kind folks who donate to our charity each month. Join them and support our mission at https://donate.freecodecamp.org Get a freeCodeCamp t-shirt for $20 with free shipping anywhere in the US: https://shop.freecodecamp.org We talk about: - Tips for busy parents who want to learn new skills. - How AI tools are no substitute for your own critical thinking - and problem solving skills. - How even though it's getting easier every day to learn programming for free, people are so distracted, and for many it feels harder and harder to sit down and do it. Links from our discussion: - Article about AI and product management (which includes some blunt takes from Quincy): https://thenewstack.io/for-devs-a-fix-for-ai-complexity-is-hiding-in-plain-sight/ - Andrea's weekly newsletter: https://mainbranch.beehiiv.com/ - Learn How to Learn course by Dr. Barbara Oakley: https://www.classcentral.com/course/learning-how-to-learn-2161 Community news section: 1. freeCodeCamp just published this beginner-friendly back-end development course. You'll learn how to build your own web servers and APIs using Node.js, Express, and MongoDB. freeCodeCamp's website and mobile apps are built using these tools, which make up the popular MERN stack. You'll also get some exposure to database architecture, security principles, testing best practices, and more. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/intro-to-backend-web-development-nodejs-express-mongodb/ 2. freeCodeCamp also published a comprehensive Blender and Three.js course where you'll build your own 3D portfolio piece: a render of an adorable home office. If you're interested in 3D rendering and computer graphics, this is the course for you. You'll learn key concepts like Quad Topology, Raycasting, OrbitControls, and more. By the end of the course, your 3D model will be live on the web so you can share it with your friends. (9 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/create-a-cute-room-portfolio-with-threejs-blender-javascript/ 3. freeCodeCamp also published a handbook on using Docker with Node.js. You'll learn how to set up Docker and Docker Compose. You'll also learn fundamental concepts like Volumes, Images, and Containers. This is an excellent resource for you to read through and code along with. Bookmark it for future reference. (full length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-use-to-docker-with-nodejs-handbook/ 4. Level up your JavaScript implementation skills with this new freeCodeCamp course on Clean Code. You'll learn how to detect "code smells" and refactor your JavaScript accordingly. You'll also learn how to use ESLint and Prettier to automate some of the more error-prone aspects of shipping code. (1 hour watch): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/level-up-your-javascript-detect-smells-and-write-clean-code/ 5. Classic text adventure games Zork I, II, and III are now open source with an MIT license. Microsoft has published their full source code on GitHub: https://github.com/historicalsource/zork1 6. Today's song of the week is 1985 classic "Something About You" by Level 42. I love the slap bass, the vocal harmony, the falsetto, and the huge synth sounds. It's impossible to listen to this song and still be in a bad mood: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpdQQoc-gkk

Today Quincy Larson interviews Alison Co and Cindy Cui, two university students who won the NW Hacks hackathon with their tool that helps people who are losing their vision learn to read Braille. He met them when GitHub invited them to their big San Francisco conference, GitHub Universe to present their project. Alison Co is a software engineer who's graduating Fall 2026. She's among the prestigious Major League Hacking Top 50 hackers. She's interned at Hubspot and will soon start interning at Rippling.  Cindy Cui is a software engineer who's graduating Spring 2026. She's interning as a backend developer at Shopify. She also teaches violin and holds the prestigious Level 10 Violin certification from the Royal Conservatory of Music. We talk about: - Tips for securing good internships - How they use AI as university students and as devs, and its limits - How they built their winning hackathon project to help people losing their vision learn to read braille Support for this podcast is provided by a grant from AlgoMonster. AlgoMonster is a platform that teaches data structure and algorithm patterns in a structured sequence, so you can approach technical interview questions more systematically. Their curriculum covers patterns like sliding window, two-pointers, graph search, and dynamic programming, helping you learn each pattern once and apply it to solve many problems. Start a structured interview prep routine at https://algo.monster/freecodecamp Support also comes from the 10,338 kind folks who donate to our charity each month. Join them and support our mission at https://donate.freecodecamp.org Get a freeCodeCamp tshirt for $20 with free shipping anywhere in the US: https://shop.freecodecamp.org Links from our discussion: - A 45-second demo of Braillelearn I recorded in the shuttle with Alison and Cindy at GitHub Universe: https://youtube.com/shorts/a7B-JvPgTQs - The Braillearn website: https://braillearn.vercel.app/ - Braillearn on GitHub: https://github.com/co-alison/nwhacks-2025 - Alison on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alison-co-3634721b7/ - Cindy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cindy-cui/ Community news section: 1. freeCodeCamp just published a Discrete Mathematics for beginners course. It'll teach you tons of math concepts that are key to modern Machine Learning. You'll learn some Number Theory and Combinatorics, then use Python to explore the Pigeonhole Principle, the Stars and Bars Principle, Stirling Numbers, the Chinese Remainder Theorem, and more. (9 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-discrete-mathematics/ 2. We also published this JavaScript course on the open source n8n agentic workflow automation tool. freeCodeCamp instructor Gavin Lon will teach you core concepts like working with loops, trigger nodes, webhooks, and more. You can code along at home and build 4 real-world projects, including a chatbot and an emergency notification app. (3 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/build-complex-workflows-with-n8n-and-master-ai-integration/ 3. Learn the popular Vue.js front end JavaScript framework. You'll learn Vue's core building blocks like components, reactivity, template syntax, dynamic data binding, and asset handling. By the end of the course, you'll have a simple Vue app that you can show to your friends. Also note that I recently interviewed Evan You, the creator of Vue, on the freeCodeCamp podcast. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-vuejs-javascript-framework-course/ 4. Learn how to run an open source LLM locally on your own hardware using Ollama. This is a great way to unlock the power of LLMs without the privacy and security tradeoffs of using public LLM websites and APIs. This freeCodeCamp guide will walk you through the setup process and give you a feel for the options at your disposal. (10 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-run-an-open-source-llm-on-your-personal-computer-run-ollama-locally/ 5. Learn about the eccentric designer Luigi Colani and his biomorphic designs that imitate nature. This video essay dives into the German designer's life history and his body of work. Why were his designs so broadly disliked by the design establishment? In what ways was he ahead of his time? How did he influence the development of cameras, or design a gas-powered car that got 130 miles to the gallon? I learned a ton from this and you will to. 30 minute watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVo7H3EheMY 6. Today's song of the week is Leon Ware's 1982 classic "Why I Came to California". I love the positive energy of the song, the brass blasts, and the duet vocals. I thought it'd be perfect since I met today's podcast guests in California when they were visiting from Canada. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1gwc9HJARU

Dr. David J. Malan teaches computer science at Harvard. Over the past decade, millions of people have taken his CS50 course both in person and online. He joins us to talk about: 1. Why he still recommends learning the C programming language in 2026 2. How he intentionally nerfs hist student's coding editors and LLMs to help them learn fundamentals faster 3. His vision for self-paced learning, and how it improves on traditional university education 4. Where the software engineering field is heading in light of recent AI tool improvements Links from our discussion: - Teaching Computer Science with Theatricality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMiNIjePZlo - Teaching CS50 with AI: https://youtu.be/ggshaJcOc6Y Dr. Malan's paper on Academic Honesty in CS50: https://cs.harvard.edu/malan/publications/Teaching_Academic_Honesty_in_CS50.pdf - Dr. Malan's paper, Toward an Ungraded CS50: https://cs.harvard.edu/malan/publications/Toward_an_Ungraded_CS50.pdf - My 2019 interview with Dr. Malan and Colton Ogden, one of his CS50 instructors: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/podcast-harvard-cs50s-david-malan-and-colton-ogden-on-computer-science/ Community news section: 1. Learn how cryptography works, and how developers use it to secure both data and communication. freeCodeCamp just published a course that will teach you Python functions for symmetric and asymmetric encryption. You'll learn about SHA-256, AES, RSA, and public / private keys as well. You'll even code your own command-line cryptography tool. (1 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/cryptography-for-beginners-full-python-course-sha-256-aes-rsa-passwords/ 2. freeCodeCamp also published a course on building your own 3D games that run in a browser using Three.js and Blender. You'll learn how to model characters, design levels, detect collisions, and make the camera follow your playable character. You'll even deploy your game to the cloud so your friends can play it. (6 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/creative-web-development-with-threejs-and-blender/ 3. Learn Event-Driven Architecture. freeCodeCamp published this advanced JavaScript handbook that will teach you about Event Loops, Task Queues, Call Stacks, Backpressure, Websockets, Pub/Sub, and more. Take your full stack development skills to the next level and be sure to share this with your developer friends. (full length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/event-based-architectures-in-javascript-a-handbook-for-devs/ 4. freeCodeCamp also published our first ever guitar course. You'll learn beginner music theory concepts like chords and scales. You'll then map them to the guitar fretboard. You'll also learn guitar-specific techniques like barre chords. I learned guitar during the pandemic and am having an absolute blast with it. I hope you will, too. (1 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/guitar-theory-course-for-beginners-learn-fretboard-major-scale-and-triads 5. Check out the winner of this year's JS13k competition, Cat Strike. This cat stealth game was built using only 13 kilobytes of JavaScript, sound, assets, everything. You avenge your fallen human using wall climbing, rolling, meowing to distract, and of course, your claws. https://js13kgames.com/2025/games/clawstrike Song of the Week: "Kiss Like Judas" by It Bites 1988: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LK4T8HnSdEI

Abbey Perini taught herself programming at age 27 while working as an admin at an engineering recruitment agency. She has worked extensively with large legacy codebases and taught best practices to developers internationally. We talk about: - How to hit the ground running with a large legacy codebase - How to get employers to remember you and actually respond to you - How she adapted to her ADHD diagnosis and stays focused and ships code - How knitting and cosplay give her perspective as a dev Links we discuss: - Abbey's blog: https://abbeyperini.com/ - Robby Russell (OhMyZSH maintainer) interview: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/podcast-oh-my-zsh-creator-and-ceo-robby-russell/ - Leon (100Devs founder) interview: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/playing-the-developer-job- search-game-to-win-in-2025-with-danny-thompson-and-leon-noel-podcast-188/ - AskJan to help you figure out if you need accomodation at work and your options: https://askjan.org/ - Little Old Lady Memory: https://www.amusingplanet.com/2020/02/that-time-when-computer-memory-was.html Links from the community news section: 1. freeCodeCamp just published a new course taught by legendary Harvard computer science professor Dr. David J. Malan. This comprehensive cybersecurity for beginners course will teach you how to secure accounts, databases, and entire software systems. Dr. Malan also shares tons of practical tips for securing your privacy in an increasingly adversarial world. (8 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-cybersecurity-from-harvard-university/ 2. freeCodeCamp also published a guide to passing the Certified Kubernetes Administrator Exam. Beau Carnes teaches this course, which will walk you through key DevOps concepts. You'll start by setting up your K8s practice environment. Then you'll bootstrap a multi-node cluster and your control plane. You'll learn about Helm, High Availability Autoscaling, CoreDNS, and more. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/prepare-for-the-kubernetes-administrator-certification-and-pass/ 3. Learn how to build high-performance mobile apps using Google's open-source Flutter framework. freeCodeCamp uses Flutter for our Android and iPhone apps, and it's way easier than maintaining two separate app codebases. This Flutter handbook will teach you how to efficiently lay out your apps with minimum widget rebuilds. You'll learn state management techniques, asynchronous patterns, and image caching best practices. You'll also learn how to use Isolates and lazy loading to make your apps really snappy. (full length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-build-scalable-and-performant-flutter-applications-a-handbook-for-devs/ 4. Learn Serverless Architecture using C# .NET and Azure cloud. This jam-packed course will teach you common microservice patterns, Onion Architecture, IoT functions, and more. (5 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/serverless-and-microservices-with-c-and-azure/ 5. If you want to listen to lofi music in the background while you work with lower data consumption (64kbps or 128kbps) than YouTube and no ads, freeCodeCamp has got your covered: https://coderadio.freecodecamp.org The song of the week is Marvin Gaye's "A Funky Space Reincarnation" released on New Year's Day 1978. Tons of funky solos, a laid back drum groove, and Marvin doing some James Brown-style vocal punctuations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zk8-EXnFSjw Buy a freeCodeCamp shirt: https://shop.freecodecamp.org The freeCodeCamp community is working hard on so many improvements to our core curriculum. You should support our charity's mission, and by extension the entire open source ecosystem that relies on our learning resources: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate

Patrick Hartley is a self-taught developer with nearly a decade of software engineering experience. When he was 21 he had to dropped out of college to provide for his family. He taught himself programming while working at a thrift store. After building his own apps and freelancing, he became the founding engineer at startup that got acquired, and has since worked as a dev at other tech companies. A few months ago he turned down an opportunity at Amazon so he could continue to work remotely from his home in Oklahoma City. He shares tips for: - Teaching yourself programming while raising kids - How to build foundational skills with JavaScript and Python - Getting a remote job when you have to compete with the global developer talent pool - Surviving as an introvert in a networking-heavy and meeting-filled profession Patrick Hartley on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-hartley-jr/ Links from the Community News intro:  1. freeCodeCamp just published a massive course that will teach you almost every major data structure and algorithm that may come up in a developer job interview. You'll learn about Time Complexity, Space Complexity, and Big O Notation. Then you'll learn concepts like Trees, Graphs, Dynamic Programming, Backtracking, and more. (49 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/master-technical-interviews-by-learning-data-structures-and-algorithms/ 2. freeCodeCamp also published a handbook that will teach you React for beginners. React is a powerful front end development library that tons of companies use to make their websites more interactive. If you already know some basic HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, this handbook is for you. You'll learn about JSX, components, event handlers, hooks, and more. (full length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/react-handbook-for-beginners-learn-jsx-hooks-rendering/ 3. This SwiftUI for Beginners course will give you the tools you need to build your first iPhone app. You can code along at home and build your own movie browsing app with powerful search features and the ability to stream movie trailers. You'll learn about navigation, API networking requests, SwiftData, and more. (4 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-swiftui-and-create-an-ios-app-from-scratch/ 4. freeCodeCamp published an advanced Python tutorial on Machine Learning Lineage. This is important to establish the safety of mission critical AI systems. You'll learn about ETL Pipelines, Data Drift Checks, Model Tuning, and Model Risk Assessment. (20 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-build-end-to-end-machine-learning-lineage/ 5. This relaxing 3D browser game where you deliver messages around town. You can customize your appearance and watch other messagers spawn into the game and deliver their packages, too. A chill way to spend 15 minutes. https://messenger.abeto.co/ 6. Song of the week: A full live set from Anime-inspired French House producer Moe Shop. He takes his new album and glitches the ever living heck out of. If you like dance music I think you're going to love this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7DxUZmqvQA

Eric Carlson is a self-taught software engineer at Cisco. In his early 20s, he worked his way up to manager at the busiest Dominos Pizza in Canada. He eventually went to college and studied liberal arts, then worked as a teacher for two decades before teaching himself programming using freeCodeCamp.  He got his first developer job at age 45 by using his programming skills to pivot into a more technical role within a big telecom company. And he's since gone further down the stack, doing back end work and now DevOps. Eric shares tips for: - Teaching yourself programming while raising young kids - Building up your mental stamina so you can program for many hours in one sitting - How to learn just-in-time so you don't waste time chasing "shiny object" tools - How to reinforce your learning by taking detailed notes on basically everything Links we discuss during the show: - Eric's 2022 freeCodeCamp forum post about his journey into software development: https://forum.freecodecamp.org/t/i-got-a-dev-job-after-9-months-on-freecodecamp-or-was-it-2-years-and-9-months/516049 - The 1990 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pizza scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-teYcHSWkg Links from the Community News intro:  1. freeCodeCamp just published a course on how to build your own MCP server with Python. Model Context Protocol Servers are like APIs for AI agents. Lots of developers are now building them to help agents interact with their websites' data more accurately. This course will teach you how to leverage the open source FastMCP library to build a calculator project that agents can then directly interact with. (1 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-mcp-essentials-and-how-to-create-secure-agent-interfaces-with-fastmcp 2. Learn how to pass Google's new Generative AI Leader Certification Exam. Andrew Brown is a CTO who has passed practically every DevOps exam under the sun, and he teaches this course. He'll give you a business-level understanding of Google Cloud's gen AI offerings. By the end of this course, with the help of Andrew's practice materials, you'll be ready to sit for the exam. (3 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/pass-the-google-generative-ai-leader-certification-exam/ 3. Teach your apps how to learn. This comprehensive Machine Learning fundamentals course will walk you through building systems smart enough to create their own algorithms. You'll use C++ to implement a Preceptron, which will then look at images of shapes and figure out ways to reliably label them. (interactive course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/machine-learning-tutorial-how-to-program-without-creating-your-own-algorithms/ 4. Strix is a relatively new open source tool for testing the security of your apps and identifying vulnerabilities. It's essentially an AI-powered white hat attacker that you set loose in your codebase. This tutorial will explain how it works and how you can use it to harden your apps against common exploits. (15 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-use-strix-the-open-source-ai-agent-for-security-testing/ 5. Learn fun facts about the atmosphere and space while riding the space elevator. Did you know that the fastest elevator in the world moves 42 miles per hour and even at that speed, it would take 80 minutes to reach space? https://neal.fun/space-elevator/ 6. Song of the week: 1980 progressive rock classic Don't Be Late by the legendary Canadian band Saga. This song features lightning fast keyboard arpeggios that are so precise (and before the era of sequencers). And the clearest annunciated lyrics ever. It's perfect for late night driving. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYt7dWb2knc

Kaleb Garner is a software engineer working at a medical technology app company. He got a scholarship to play baseball at a state university, but a serious knee injury ended his career and he dropped out. After moving back in with his parents and working at an optometry office, he decided to teach himself programming. He used freeCodeCamp and 100Devs to learn for free, and got his first front end developer job when he was only 19. He has since expanded his skills to work on large legacy Python and C# codebases. We talk about: - How his Major League Baseball goals and his dream of becoming a doctor ended in the same catastrophic semester - His grind to get his first developer role after only 20 carefully researched job applications - Getting laid off right before his wedding and losing all discipline in his frantic job search - Tips for making your skillset and your network layoff-resilient Links we discuss: - Recent NY Times article Quincy mentions about people struggling to find developer jobs ("They're doing it wrong") [paywalled]: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/10/technology/coding-ai-jobs-students.html - 1999 movie Office Space trailer about a simpler time in corporate life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_fG_zLbBeU - Leon Noel's 100Devs program and community that Kaleb used alongside freeCodeCamp: https://100devs.org/ Links from the news section: 1. freeCodeCamp just published an in-depth Harvard course that will teach you SQL and relational databases. You'll learn key concepts like CRUD operations (Create, Read, Update, Delete). You'll also learn how to normalize data, join tables, and index your databases for faster performance. You'll use real-world datasets and write your own queries in SQLite, before moving on to working with PostgreSQL and MySQL. (11 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-databases-and-sql-from-harvard-university 2. This advanced Python Machine Learning course will teach you the history of computer vision architectures. You'll learn about design philosophies like LeNet, AlexNet, Xception, and Vision Transformers. You'll see side-by-side comparisons, and learn how they've progressed over the past few decades. (5 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/the-history-of-deep-learning-vision-architectures 3. freeCodeCamp also published this handbook that will teach you all about JSON Web Tokens, which are key to modern authentication and security. You'll learn their history and how they work, through a series of helpful diagrams and code examples. (full length handbook): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/the-json-web-token-handbook-learn-to-use-jwts-for-web-authentication/ 4. Learn how developers are using the Compound Components Design Pattern to clean up their messy React code. You can code along at home and refactor several components. This will help you solidify your understanding of this design pattern and tighten up the front end logic on your projects. (30 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/compound-components-pattern-in-react/ These are just some of the many open source learning resources that the freeCodeCamp community published this week. We have ridiculous momentum right now. We're teaching more and more programming topics, as well as world languages like Spanish and Chinese. If you're looking for a modern equivalent to the Library of Alexandria, well, we're building it. Start supporting our charity and our mission today: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate

Evan You is the creator of the popular Vue JavaScript library for front end development and the Vite JavaScript build tool that a lot of devs use as a boilerplate for their new projects. He's a self-taught developer based in Singapore. He shares tips for: - Getting involved in open source - Leading open source projects and attracting sponsors - And how to use AI as a thinking assistant rather than just as a coding assistant We also talk about his thoughts on the Chinese open source scene, a new documentary that just came out about Vite, and his new project: Void 0. Links from the news section: 1. freeCodeCamp just published a new in-depth course that will teach you full stack development fundamentals from the ground up. It covers front end development tools like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Then it moves to back end development tools like Node, SQL, and TypeScript. You can code along at home and build a variety of projects while getting exposed to a ton of concepts. (47 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/become-a-full-stack-developer-with-one-video/ 2. We also just completed work on this new Go programming course where you build your own movie streaming app. Go is a fast back end language, and here we're pairing it with the Gin-Gonic web server framework. As you build this project, you'll also integrate your movie database with OpenAI's API to analyze data and give your users personalized movie recommendations. (15 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/build-a-full-stack-movie-streaming-app-with-go-react-mongodb-openai/ 3. When browsing the web, you may see the error message that something has been "blocked by CORS policy." CORS stands for Cross-Origin Resource Sharing. When fetching data, if the domain of the requester is different from the domain of the receiver, your browser will reject that request. It's an important security measure, but it can also be a headache for developers trying to maintain their web apps. Luckily, freeCodeCamp just published this tutorial – chock full of theory and code examples – to help you understand the basics. (20 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-fix-cross-origin-errors/ 4. You've probably heard people throw around terms like Deep Learning, Machine Learning, and Generative AI. But what do they mean in relation to one another? This quick article breaks down the jargon for you in plain English. (10 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/machine-learning-vs-deep-learning-vs-generative-ai/ I'm proud of the freeCodeCamp community and all these open source learning resources we're building. If you're proud of it too, then please consider joining the 10,881 kind folks who support our charity and our mission: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate Bare Metal Gaming: Zaxxon running on assembly (no operating system below it): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFHnbozz7b4 Song of the week: "Do the Dance (빌려온 고양이)" by Illit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXUeulskMuY Links from our discussion: The new documentary about Vite (40 minute watch) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmWQqAKLgT4&pp=ygUPdnVlIGRvY3VtZW50YXJ5

He's a self-taught software engineer who got his first developer job at age 43. He spent decades working in manufacturing while raising his kids, before using freeCodeCamp to learn programming. He was able to translate his JavaScript skills into working on enterprise Java apps, and now works at a semiconductor company. We talk about: What working 12 hour manufacturing shifts is really like Why he preferred freeCodeCamp's free curriculum over the paid courses that he tried When to use AI code generation and when to do it yourself Having faith in your ability to ultimately get a developer job Play snake in your browser's address bar [open source repo - links to the game itself]: https://github.com/epidemian/snake  Song of the week: Return of the Space Cowboy by Jamiroquai 1994 https://youtu.be/OPkjnRIdQXQ News items: 1. Learn how to code your own LLM from scratch with Python with this free 6 hour course. freeCodeCamp just published an in-depth Python course that will walk you through training your own Large Language Model. If you have some basic programming skills and want to get deeper into Machine Learning, this is an excellent place to start. You'll learn about key concepts like Reward Modeling, Supervised Fine-Tuning, Mixture-of-Experts Layers, RMSNorm, RoPE, KV caching, and more. Dive in. (6 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/code-an-llm-from-scratch-theory-to-rlhf/  2. We also published a Python course that will help you build production-ready AI systems. This no-nonsense course will take you step by step through building a sophisticated data pipeline that scrapes training data, cleans it up, and ensures its integrity before feeding it into your model. I love this dude's relentless teaching style. (2 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/build-an-enterprise-grade-ai-project/  3. freeCodeCamp also published a course on building advanced AI agents. You'll use Python to implement interactive voice agents and intelligent research assistants. This course will even expose you to multi-agent workflows. You'll use sample codebases and popular tools like LangChain and LiveKit to code along at home. (1 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-build-advanced-ai-agents/  4. Memory leaks are one of the most common performance issues with React apps. This JavaScript tutorial will walk you through the most common ways they afflict your apps. Then it'll equip you with the tools you need to track memory leaks down and fix them. It's chock full of code examples for Event Listeners, Timers, Subscriptions, and Async Operations. (15 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/fix-memory-leaks-in-react-apps/  These are just some of the many open source learning resources the freeCodeCamp community published this week. As you may know, we also launched daily coding challenges, which you can solve in Python or JavaScript – right inside the freeCodeCamp iPhone/Android app. We've got a lot of pots cooking, with tons more courses on the way. Please consider joining the 10,881 kind folks who support our charity and our mission: https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate 

Tom Mondloch quit programming after he finished community college. After a few years of odd jobs, he decided to get back into programming and discovered freeCodeCamp.  He was just learning his own way, and didn't think freeCodeCamp's linear curriculum would be worth his time. But he stuck with it, got good, and ultimately started contributing to our open source project. He's since joined freeCodeCamp's staff and archetected freeCodeCamp's entire relational database curriculum, which you can run in your browser or right inside your VS Code editor. Tom shares tips for: - Brushing up on your programming skills if you've taken a few years off - Contributing to open source - Using AI codegen tools sensibly and not relying too heavily on them He also talks about the role of vocational college, his love of the outdoors, and how working remotely allows him to continue to live in small town middle America without the need to move to a big city. A huge thank you to the 10,889 kind folks who make this podcast possible by supporting 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: - freeCodeCamp's daily coding challenges in Python and JavaScript: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/introducing-freecodecamp-daily-python-and-javascript-challenges-solve-a-new-programming-puzzle-every-day/ - Mrugesh's article on AI Assisted Coding (that Tom used for his hackathon project): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-become-an-expert-in-ai-assisted-coding-a-handbook-for-developers/ - Jessica Wilkins who helped Tom with his hackathon project on the freeCodeCamp podcast episode #111: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/podcast-jessica-wilkins-classical-music-learning-to-code/ News items: 1. freeCodeCamp just published this comprehensive front end development course where you build your own browser-based code editor. You can code along at home and build your own single page app development environment with tabs for editing your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Along the way, you'll learn some intermediate JS techniques that allow for instant live preview, so you can see the results of your code changes right away. (4 hour YouTube course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/code-your-own-code-editor/ 2. I also made a quick announcement about some big improvements to our core Full Stack Development curriculum. In short, we're breaking down our new coursework into a series of six new certifications you can earn along the way to the capstone cert. These include Python, Relational Databases, Front End Libraries, and more. (5 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/introducing-freecodecamp-checkpoint-certifications/ 3. freeCodeCamp also just published this new course that will help you pass the Databricks Data Engineer Associate certification exam. Andrew Brown is a CTO who has passed practically every DevOps exam under the sun, and he teaches this course. He'll introduce you to key concepts like Clusters, Structured Streaming, Data Lakes, and more. (8 hour course): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/prepare-for-the-databricks-data-engineer-associate-certification-exam-and-pass/ 5. Enjoy this breezy read about Cosine Similarity and the role it plays in Large Language Models. As its author, Manish, says, Cosine Similarity is "a bridge between human language and machine understanding. It allows a model to treat meaning as geometry, turning questions and answers into points in space." Not only will you learn the math involved, you'll also see it implemented in Python code. (10 minute read): https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-does-cosine-similarity-work/ 6. Krazam America's Next Top Model Context Protocol Server skit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVrCPo8eB3A Song of the Week: A Taste of Honey: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhD58dP9kq8